'**— < ! ; \ > ■ - \ V * J % ^ * » , v A*' ""V •A, * A > * X «V V ISPf Charles [Deems, D.D..LUX tftjfOROFTHE (HUpoFTHE^TRAN^R) NEW YORK HUHT&CATON. FIFTH AVE.&20 T .» ST. i CHIPS AND CHUNKS EVERY FIRESIDE ■=4 •Wit, "WisbOM, am pareos BY Charles F\ Deems, D.D., IvL.D., n Pastor of the Church of the Strangers, New York, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. ^ YOF NEW YORK : HUNT & EATON, ISO Fifth Ave., cor. Twentieth St. 1890. ? -sv- z Copyright, 1889, by New York. £X2z N dictating an introduction to this work I am actuated by two motives — personal friendship for the author and admiration for his book. The work has been lying upon my desk for several weeks, and I have taken it up at various times, dipping into it here and there as a busy man naturally would. I have been impressed with the wide range of Dr. Deems's studies, the breadth of his sympathies, and his wise way of putting things. The Doctor has been a man of great activity and a multifarious author, but while with most voluminous writers their utterances are purely ephemeral, the Doctor manages to put into every article from his pen something worth preserving. It is well known that Dr. Deems had the confidence of Commodore Vanderbilt, whose practical judgment was probably keener and more accurate than that of any other man who ever lived in this country, and upon the Doctor's INTRODUCTION. advice the Commodore spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for beneficent objects. The qualities which impressed Dr. Deems upon Com- modore Vanderbilt, and also upon his son William H., are every-where evident in this book — honesty of purpose, a clear conception of the object in view, lucidity of state- ment, and wisdom of suggestion. I am sure this work will be found of value in the home circle, both to the old and to the young. OiKgJulaajuuj yU < New York, May, 1890. \A otO^L^^tjLA. J8l iMJ^ ft * —'..II ■ - ^ / « < Marsu- pials Mam- mals Birds H Rep- tiles Cretace- Fishes >: In- sects Crus- tacea Worms w: Carbon- \ iferous \ 'Devonian. Cepha- lopoda Gas- poda > Ace- phala I- Echin- oderm Ph Taconic. . Poly- pes Aca- lephs As Agassiz says it is in Nature. Radiates. Mollusks. Articulates. Vertebrates. > < p < K a H Pliocene.. Miocene . . Mam- mals Marsu- pials > X < Q 4. ' O U w CO 'Cretace- ous Birds Permian. . Carbon- \ iferous ( 'Devonian. Silurian... Cambrian. .Taconic. In- sects Fishes Rep- tiles > 1 « Poly- pes Aca- lephs Echin- oderm Ace- phala Gas- tero- poda Cepha- lopoda Worms Crus- tacea FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 95 IX.— THE EXISTENCE OF INSTINCT. There is a large department of animal actions having their origin in what we call instinct, and the existence of instinct creates a very great difficulty to the adoption of the theory of evolution. Instinct has been defined as a special internal impulse, urging animals to the performance of certain actions which are useful to them or to their kind, but the use of which they do not themselves perceive, and their performance of which is a necessary consequence of their being placed in certain circumstances .* Instinctive actions are not due to mechanical or chemical causes, nor to the intelligence, experience, or will, as has been shown by M. Lemoine. f He points out that these actions, which take place with a general fixity and precision, are generally present in all the individuals of each species, and can be perfectly performed the very first time their actions are called for. Very plainly, there- fore, instinct cannot in any sense be due to habit, and instinctive action is not performed more easily the millionth time than it is the first. There is no intelligence involved, for, in the first place, the use of an instinctive action is not perceived by him who performs it, nor does he choose the method of its performance ; and there are some instances in which if the animal had choice he would certainly not perform that action to which he is impelled by instinct. A new-born babe exerts no intelligence in sucking and swallowing the first time those acts are performed; and of course it is not then assisted by habit. It is not denied that habits maybe inherited ; it is only affirmed that there are instinctive actions which cannot be habits. The theory of lapsed intelligence cannot account for the instinctive actions going on at present under our eyes, both in ourselves and in other animals. This theory assumes that wasps, bees, ants, and other animals once exercised a conscious, deliberate, discriminating faculty in their per- formance of the actions which we call instinct. It would be a vi- olent supposition that a female instinctively foresees what would be the first necessity of her new offspring when those necessities are so different from her own, or that she has carried a remembrance of * Todd's Cyclopcedia of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. iii, p. 3. \ L? Habitude et V Instinct, Balliere, Paiis, 1875. 9 6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS what was her first necessity the instant she came into conscious ex- istence. In regard to " natural selection," all that Mr. Darwin has done has been to show change of instincts already acquired. This puts us only a step back ; it does not account for the origin of in- stinct, where the whole weight of our argument lies. Mr. Mivart,* in speaking of the theory that some action was per- formed instantly, and this inherited, brings forward the following case : There is the case of the wasp, sphex, which stings spiders, caterpillars, and grasshoppers exactly in the spot or spots where their ganglia lie, and so paralyzes them. Even the strongest advocate of the intelligence of insects would not affirm that the mother sphex has a knowledge of the comparative anatomy of the nervous system of these very diversely formed insects. According to the doctrine of nat- ural selection either an ancestral wasp must have accidentally stung them in the right place, and so our sphex of to-day is the naturally selected descendant of a line of insects which inherited this lucky tendency to sting different insects differ- ently, but always in the exact situation of their nervous ganglia ; or else the young of the ancestral sphex originally fed on dead food, but the offspring of some indi- viduals, who happened to sting their prey so as to paralyze, but not kill them, were better nourished, and so the habit grew. But the incredible supposition that the ancestor should accidentally have acquired the habit of stinging different insects differently, but always in the right spot, is not eliminated by the latter hypothesis. Now, according to evolution, whatever exists must have sprung from something with which it is still connected — that is to say, evo- lution demands continuity of development. Here we have whole classes of actions, performed by all kinds of animals, to which they are impelled by what we call instinct, and evolution has not been able to find a place for instinct. X.— LANGUAGE. The races of inferior animals which existed six thousand years ago ought to have made some appreciable approach by this time to what man was then, while man should have advanced. But the facts show that it is not so. Between a gorilla and Laura Bridg- man, for instance, what a chasm ! She is almost entirely cut off from the use of the five senses, and yet her intellect is compara- tively highly developed ; while the most lively of all the inferior * In an article entitled " Organic Nature's Riddle," Fortnightly Review, 1885. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 97 animals can only be taught some tricks of imitation. The gorilla is said to possess vocal organs similar to the human. He has had them as long as man — longer, according to some evolutionists — and yet he cannot form a language, nor, so far as we know, even be taught a language, nor the notes of music. Professor Max Miiller, in a very interesting article on " Forgotten Bibles," in the Nineteenth Century, 1885, writing of this topic, says : As language had been pointed out as a Rubicon which no beast had ever crossed, Darwin lent a willing ear to those who think that they can derive lan- guage — that is, real logos, from interjections and mimicry, by a process of spon- taneous evolution, and produced himself some most persuavive arguments. We know how able, how persuasive, a pleader Darwin could be. When he wished to show how man could have descended from an animal which was born hairy and remained so during life,* he could not well maintain that an animal without hair was fitter to survive than an animal with hair. He therefore wished us to believe that our female semi-human progenitors lost their hair by some accident, were, as Hermann said, " minus belluinae facie et indole," and that in the process of sexual selection this partial or complete baldness was considered an attraction, and was thus perpetuated from mother to son. It was difficult, no doubt, to give up Mil- ton's Eve for a semi-human progenitor, suffering, it may be, from leprosy or leu- coderma, yet Darwin, like Gottfried Hermann, nearly persuaded us to do so. However, in defending so hopeless, or, at all events, so unfortified a position as the transition of the cries of animals into the language of man, even so great a general as Darwin undoubtedly was will occasionally encounter defeat, and I be- lieve I may say without presumption, that, to speak of no other barrier between man and beast, the barrier of language remains as unshaken as ever, and renders every attempt at deriving man genealogically from any known or unknown ape, for the present, at least, impossible, or, at all events, unscientific. XI.— GENIUS. A theory of universology must not only not stand contradicted by plain and unquestionable and manifold phenomena of nature, but it must account, in some measure, for all the most noteworthy things that are. Does it ? In the department of the human mind there is such a thing as genius. It is universally acknowledged. What it is no man may know. There may be great differences in the results of attempts at defin- ing it, but all observers perceive that it is different from every thing else. It is more easy to tell zvhat it is not than what it is. It is not power of perception, or comparison, or reasoning, or memory, * Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 377, where more details may be found as to the exact process of baldness or denudation in animals. 7 98 CHIPS AND CHUNKS or fancy, or imagination ; nor is it admitted to be the product of all these. Yet it uses all these, and quickens them, and is superior to them. How is it produced ? Heredity can be employed by evolu- tion to account for physical and mental traits. The run of pro- clivities, propensities, tendencies, talents, may be accounted for by heredity and traced down successive descendants of families. But where does genius come from ? Sometimes — not often — it falls on a member of a family which has exhibited talent. Usually it comes on the man who has had no ancestor distinguished from the mass of men. He starts like a star out of a rayless sky. Genius comes parentless and goes childless. Genius is the Melchisedeck of mind, " without father, without mother, without descent." In an article by M. Caro, of the Institute of France, in the Revue des deitx Mondes, in which he exposes the fallacies of Galton's " Heredity of Genius," he says : Those sovereign minds, precisely by what they possess that is incommunicable, rise high and alone above the floods of generations which precede and follow them. . . . Those exalted originals who tower above mankind have no fathers and no sons in the blood. If evolution be true, genius would be the product of what went before and would carry the results of previous mental progress in- volved in itself to be evolved into other genius. But the fact is against the theory, and no theory of evolution can be accepted as established until it puts itself in harmony with the fact of the exist- ence of genius. XII— THE MORAL SENSE. The existence of the moral sense in man is as acknowledged a phenomenon as the existence of the vertebral column in his body. Humanity is universally conscious of a distinction between right and wrong. This moral sense creates the demand for an ethical system which shall be suited to all times and places in which hu- manity can exist. For the origin of this moral sense evolution has no explanation, and it can find in nature no " data for ethics " against which the moral sense of mankind does not rebel. The at- tempt of Mr. Darwin to explain the former, and of Mr. Spencer to produce the latter, have been such philosophic failures as to be FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 99 almost ludicrous. The platform of evolution is wholly mechanical, and, therefore, necessarily excludes the idea of morality. Nothing can be mechanical and moral at the same time. What is done me- chanically is not a deed for which the machine can be responsible. That which a man does voluntarily, that deed of his which was not produced through him by any antecedent or external or irresistible cause, that which has its causation wholly in his unforced volition, is that for which he can be held responsible. Now, there is the possi- bility of the performance of such a voluntary action or there is not. If any of the existing theories of evolution be true there is no such possibility ; but every human being has the consciousness of such possibility, and so it has come to pass that every existing hy- pothesis of evolution, however it may have succeeded in making an image on the mirror of the intellect, has failed to make the moral sense of men perceive that it has existence as a moral reality. Even Mr. Darwin admits that " free-will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalist." Moreover, there is in mankind a feeling that morality is both universal and immortal. It is not for one clime or one planet, one generation, or one race, and it is not dependent on any thing that can perish. It gathers its prodigious power from the belief in man that it is not tribal nor ethnic, that it is not municipal nor national, that it is not ancient nor modern, that it has always been so and will always be so. The imperishability of heroic righteous- ness is the faith in which have been performed all those deeds which have made way for liberty and civilization, and have ren- dered the doers glorious in the sight of succeeding generations. But if evolution be true there is no such thing. Whatever by ingenious arrangement can be made to take on the semblance of moral good- ness is to perish. Evolution teaches, according to Mr. Leslie Stephen, that all progress is mechanical, that progress is a stage of evolution, that evolution means a continuous process of adjustment, that this signifies that the existing adjustment is imperfect, that the moment the adjustment becomes perfect man will have reached the highest arc of the curve, " after which he could only expect de- scent." Professor Goldwin Smith {Contemporary Review) called at- tention to the fact that the late Professor Clifford distinctly looked IOO CHIPS AND CHUNKS forward to a catastrophe in which man and all his works will perish, and that Mr. Herbert Spencer believes the same. Now, if all a man's acts which seem to him to have in them a moral quality have no further reach nor longer endurance than those which are merely involuntary, like his heart-beats, or those which are mani- festly morally colorless, as the length to which he lets his hair or or nails grow, if all that we associate with goodness, self- sacrifice, heroism, has no greater heritage in the future than the most indifferent acts performable by an animal, all being alike the products of mere machine, then there can be no basis of morality, and of course, no data for a science of ethics. The idea of an evolutionists talking of " data of ethics " involves a ridiculous absurdity. Mr. Darwin admits that " free-will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalists," and Professor Tyndall says that the chasm between the brain action and consciousness is impassable, that, here is the rock on which materialism must split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind.* XIII.— ETERNITY OF MATTER. Does not a theory of evolution which places its account of the uni- verse wholly in matter with its potencies necessarily involve the eternity of matter ?f In addition to all the burdens to be carried by every other theory of evolution this theory assumes other loads. One is this : Eternity of matter is as difficult to conceive, as well as to prove, as is the eternity of mind. Mind is the product of matter. Matter is the product of mind. Here are two statements, both of which cannot be true. The question arises, which theory will most easily account for the greater number of phenomena ? If it can- not be assumed that by proving either we can displace the other, if both be equally beyond demonstration, we must take that which gives the easier explanation of the universe. The theory that mind preceded matter certainly does this. But, for the argument's sake, suppose matter to be eternal ; then *See Munger's Freedom of Faith y pp. 226, 227. t Tyndall says: " The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation" {Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, p. 79). FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. IO i all its potencies and possiblities must be co-eternal, or must have entered into or been placed in matter at some definite period. Did they enter matter ? If so, where were they before they so entered ? And how did they get in ? If they had no previous existence, then they were created. If they were created that fact takes away all difficulty from the supposition that matter itself was created. If they were not created they were co-eternal with matter. The supposition that matter with force is eternal is an immense weight for any theory to carry ; for we must remember what " eter- nal" means — millenniums written in figures, each one of which mul- tiplying all its predecessors by ten, and standing in a line billions of times longer than the greatest distance between the two most remote fixed stars, would be but as a grain of sand to the universe in any attempt to represent eternity. Now whatever force or forces is or are at present at work to differentiate existing matter, to pro- mote development, to give even the suggestion of evolution, must on this theory have been eternally at work. The homogeneous must have been eternally becoming the heterogeneous ; the simple must have been eternally becoming the complex ; the rude and in- choate must have eternally been becoming the complete and perfect. But this is inconceivable, because it necessarily involves the concept of a thing being synchronously one thing and another, simple and complex, and, while being both at the same time, passing from one to the other — three states in which no one thing can possibly be conceived to be at any one moment. But, suppose we are obstructed by the barriers of our intellectual limitations from going back measurelessly into the eternity past, the evolutionist can, in imagination, retreat many millions of years along the banks of the stream which has no source, and jump in somewhere with his theory. If the theory of evolution now con- sidered be true the law of nature demands that all things must be developing from the rude to the perfect, from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inorganic to the organic, from the lifeless to the living, from the simplest living proto- zoic cells to Shakespeares and Newtons. Each variation may have required millions of years, and there may have been billions of these variations to bring the drop of protoplasm up to the poet or I0 2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS philosopher. But we can furnish a million times as much duration as may be required because we have eternity at our command in the argument. But, all at once, it occurs to us that the stages of progress on which we stand must have been reached eternal ages ago, and that through those eternal years the physical and intellectual universe should have ascended until the system had reached its consummate flowering, and every living thing become a man, and every man an angel, and angelic nature have developed through the eternities until there should have appeared an infinite God, and that divine product should have had eternal personal existence. The theory of evolu- tion, which by the assumption of the eternity of matter starts with excluding any God, necessitates the existence of an eternal God. Nay, more. If from the inorganic could be evolved the lowest form of organism in which life could reside, and if from that lowest form man could be evolved, and not only a specimen man, but the num- berless multitudes of men which we call mankind — why not from this great and innumerable human race have been evolved in the lapsing eternities an unlimited number of perfect beings — that is, of gods? If that form of the evolution theory which demands the eternity of matter be true then polytheism must be true, and there must be an innumerable company of perfect gods still evolving into something better and higher than perfect godhood. An eternity- of-matter evolution that stops short of this absurdity commits log- ical suicide. If evolution has been eternally in progress it must eter- nally progress. An evolution which has beginning must have an end. An evolution which has an end must have a beginning. An evolution which has either beginning or end is no evolution ; it is merely a limited development theory ; and that is a totally different thing, and is not now under discussion. XIV— RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO SCIENCE. Evolutionists who are not atheists require time, if they do not demand eternity. Thus, Mr. Darwin's theory of " Natural Selec- tion," according to his own statements, on a calculation made by so competent a person as Mr. St. George Mivart, required two thou- sand five hundred millions of years, since life began on the planet, for such accretion of infinitesimal variations in succeeding genera- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 103 tions as would be necessary to bring the flora and fauna of the planet to their present state. But physical astromomy shows that the earth has not been able to sustain life more than probably ten millions of years. We give one view of this subject stated in the words of Sir Will- iam Thomson : To get a superior limit to the possible deviation of something not very different from the present state of things on the earth other sciences than geology must be appealed to ; and here because, and only because, our scientific men are usually mere specialists, the natural philosopher is required. What can a geologist, as such, tell about the nature, origin, and duration of the sun's heat? Yet suppose it could be shown that ten million years ago the sun was very much hotter than it now is, would not that fact have an important bearing on the length of time dur- ing which plants and animals have inhabited the earth ? What can he tell us about the internal heat of the earth, and the rate at which it is at present being lost? Yet if it could be shown, on strict physical principles, that ten millions of years ago the underground temperature was at least that of red heat at a depth of one thousand feet below the surface, would not that materially influence his specu- lations ? He may tell the mathematician to " mind his own business," but the mathematician must reply, " My business is in this case to save you from ignorantly committing egregious blunders, which not only retard the progress of your own science, but tend to render all science a laughing-stock to the uninitiated." After going over the evidence which overturns the popular geol- ogy he sums up thus : " Now, here is direct opposition between physical astronomy and modern geology, as represented by a very large, very influential, and I may add, in many respects philosophical and sound body of investigators, constituting, perhaps, a majority of British geologists. // is quite certain that a mistake has been ?nade ; that British popular theology at the present time is in direct opposition to the principles of natural philosophy." * Professor Tait, of Edinburgh, speaking in regard to this point, says : The subject [how long the earth has been habitable for plants and animals] has been taken up very carefully within the last few years by Sir William Thomson. . . . He divides his argument upon it into three heads. The first is an argument from the internal heat of the earth ; the second is from the tidal retardation of the earth's rotation ; and the third is from the sun's temperature. . . . Each of these arguments is quite independent of the other two, and is— for all tend to something about the same — to the effect that ten millions of years is about the utmost that can be allowed, from the physical point of view, for all the changes that have taken place on the earth's surface since vegetable life of the lowest form was capa- ble of existing here. ... I dare say many of you are acquainted with the specu- lations of Lyell and others, especially of Darwin, who tell us that even for a com- * North British Review, No. C. 104 CHIPS AND CHUNKS paratively brief portion of recent geological history three hundred millions of years will not suffice ! . . . Physical considerations, from various independent points of view, render it utterly impossible that more than ten or fifteen millions of years can be granted. * Now these are the results in which Sir William Thomson and Professor Tait, two of the foremost modern mathematical physi- cists, concur. Dr. Croll questions the exact trustworthiness of some of Sir William's calculations, but he himself says : The general conclusion to which we are therefore led from physical considera- tions regarding the age of the sun's heat is that the entire geological history of our globe must be comprised within less than one hundred millions of years. t Darwin felt and acknowledged this " formidable objection," and apparently has no solution to offer except the supposition of" violent changes, causing a more rapid rate of development.^ And this, in face of the fact that natural selection can admit of no " leaps" or "gaps."§ If continuous evolution is true, and matter contains, by reason of being matter, the " promise and potency " of man, then man must have had for ancestor some being that stands between himself and the animal next most likely to have been his progenitor. The ape has been accepted as representing that thing, but there then came the fatal necessity of finding an animal, or animals, supplying the in- dispensable "missing link" or links. This is very unscientific. Science depends upon the known, upon what has been found, not upon the unknown, upon that which has not been found, upon that which has no proof of being in existence except in the mind of the thinker, and probably would never have been there except that the thinker's hypothesis demanded it. To prove evolution it is assumed as a fact that certain things exist because evolution (the very thesis to be proved) demands their existence. And that is sometimes set forth as science ! It is assumed that if a certain witness be in existence, and he could be called into court, he would testify to certain things, which must be true, on the advocate's theory of the inno- cence of the accused. Is it not plain that the prosecution has as * Recent Advances in Physical Science, p. 165. + Climate and Time, p. 355. \ Origin of Species, p. 286, sixth edition. § Natural selection can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps. — Darwin : Oi'igin of Species, p. 156. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 105 much right to assume that the testimony of the supposititious witness would be on the other side ? We have been waiting so long for " the missing link " that some impatience should be allowable. To keep us patient until the " missing link " can be found we have had our attention called to every new skull found in caves or other out-of-the-way places. That has been proclaimed as the missing link. But the fact is, the brain of the highest anthropoid ape proves to be only about one third of the human brain mass. Here is the case as stated by Wallace : The few remains yet known of prehistoric man do not indicate any material dim- inution in the size of the brain-case. A Swiss skull of the stone age, found in the lake dwelling of Meilen, corresponded exactly to that of a Swiss youth of the present day. The celebrated Neanderthal skull had a larger circumference than the average ; and its capacity, indicating actual mass of brain, is estimated to have been not less than seventy-five cubic inches, or nearly the average of existing Aus- tralian crania. The Engis skull, perhaps the oldest known, and which, according to Sir John Lubbock, " there seems no doubt was really contemporary with the mammoth and the cave-bear," is yet, according to Professor Huxley, "a fair average skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage." Of the cave-men of Les Eyzies, who were un- doubtedly contemporary with the reindeer in the South of France, Professor Paul Broca says : " The great capacity of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine elliptical form of the anterior part of the profile of the skull, are incontestable characteristics of superiority such as we are accustomed to meet with in civilized races."* Professor Virchow says : When we study the fossil man of the quaternary period, who must, of course, have stood comparatively near to our primitive ancestors in the order of descent, or rather ascent, we find always a man, just such men as are now. . . . The old troglodyte, pile-villagers, and bog-people prove to be quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a living person would only be too happy to possess such. . . . Nay, if we gather together the whole sum of the fossil men hitherto known, and put them parallel with those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are among living men a much larger number of individuals who show a relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to this time. . . . Every addition to the amount of objects which we have attained as materials for discussion has removed us further from the hypoth- esis propounded, t XV. -THE ATOMIC THEORY. The atomic theory seems fatal to evolution. The atoms, or, if you choose, the molecules, of which all matter is composed, have * Wallace : Contribzitions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 336,/. + The Freedom of Science in the Modern State, p. 63. 106 CHIPS AND CHUNKS never changed their properties. It is inconsistent with the concept of " atom " that it should ever have been larger or smaller. There are no " natural " causes for this state of things, but the state is manifest. If evolution were a universal law atoms would be subject to it ; but atoms, by their essential constitution, cannot be subject to the law of evolution ; the conclusion is manifest. Moreover, the exact equality of all molecules, and of each to all others, shows, as Sir John Herschel pointed out, " the essential character of a manu- factured article," and therefore cannot have been evolved, and can- not be eternal. The late gifted and lamented Professor Clifford said : If there is any name among contemporary natural philosophers to whom is due the reverence of all true students of science it is that of Professor Clerk Maxwell. From Professor Maxwell's very remarkable " Discourse on Mole- cules," delivered before the British Association, at Bradford, Sep- tember, 1873, the following important extract is taken: In the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so dis- tant from each other that no material thing can ever have passed from one to another ; and yet this light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for ex- ample, whether inSirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time. Each molecule, therefore, throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the meter of the archives at Paris or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac. No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have pro- duced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are, there- fore, unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to any of the causes which we call natural. On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manu- factured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self -existent. XVI.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. If the theory of evolution is to be accepted it must take in the whole universe. A "link" does not help us ; we want links which all belong to the same chain, and enough to make a chain. Phys- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 107 ical organisms must have arisen from the very lowest conceivable type into all the perfections known among them, and then they must have been able to take on life. Have they ever done so? This makes the hypothesis of spontaneous animal generation indis- pensable. Evolution stands or falls with it. Why should evolu- tionists be wasting their time in showing the differentiations among vegetables on the one hand and animals on the other? Grant every thing that has been claimed in those departments, and a thou- sand-fold as much, and nothing would be gained ior evolution, what- ever light might be thrown upon development. If evolution be true our ancestors ought constantly through the ages to have been wit- nessing, not only uncountable numbers of cases in which vegetables and animals have been passing and have passed from one species to another, and it ought to be a phenomenon common to contem- poraneous observation, but, in addition, spontaneous generation ought not to be now an uncommon phenomenon, and the records of the past should abound with cases. Paleontology should furnish facts fixed in the rocks to sustain this hypothesis. No man should be called upon to disprove it ; its supporters must prove it by giv- ing such multiplied cases of its occurrence as to show 7 that it is the rule in the case, not the exception. Have they done so? On the contrary, not a single instance has ever been exhibited. If any thing has been supposed to be a case of spontaneous generation in our day it has been proved, on the examination of competent scientists, to be simply a case of life from previous life, and not at all the passage of the non-living inorganic into the living organic existence. Pasteur and Lionel Beale, Virchow and Tyndall, unite in testifying that there never has yet been discovered any proof of any case of spontaneous generation. In making the experiments by wmich Bastian and Haeckel sup- posed they had shown spontaneous generation they employed great heats to destroy all existing forms of life from the space in which they claim that life afterward spontaneously appeared. They either did so destroy life or they did not. If they did not, then there was no spontaneous generation. If they did, then what afterward ap- peared could not have come in the way of evolution. Now, the original living thing was on the planet before its greatest heat 108 CHIPS AND CHUNKS period, or else appeared thereafter. If the former, and it passed through all the fierceness of that heat, then the experimenters mentioned above killed nothing by heat, and so their experiments proved nothing ; if it was introduced after the greatest heat period then life came ab extra, and not by evolution. If a single instance could be found it would be a greater miracle than would be exhibited by a living man's calling a dead man to life. In the latter case the corpse would have an organism not only adapted to life but also having already had the habits of life, and the vital force would be sent into it ab extra, from a life already in existence. But in the former case it would be a thing without life performing what could be done only by a thing with life that itself might become a living thing. Herbert Spencer {First Principles, p. 32) : To conceive self-creation is to conceive potential existence passing into actual existence by some inherent necessity, which we cannot do. We cannot form any idea of a potential existence of the universe, as distinguished from its actual exist- ence. . . . We have no state of consciousness answering to the words — an in- herent necessity by which potential existence became actual existence. To render them into thought, existence, having for an indefinite period remained in one form, must be conceived as passing without any external or additional impulse into another form ; and this involves the idea of a change without a cause ; a thing of which no idea is possible. Still, this would be no valid objection if a case could be produced. There is no gain in discussing the question whether or not A killed B until it be shown that B is at least dead. There will probably be admitted to be no more trustworthy tes- timony on questions of science than that of Professor Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S., and he says : There are no scientific facts which can at all warrant the conclusion that non- living matter only, under any conceivable circumstances, can be converted into living matter, or at any previous time has, by any combination, or under any con- ditions that may have existed, given rise to the formation of any thing which pos- sesses, or has possessed, life. Professor Huxley says: Not only is the kind of evidence adduced in favor of abiogenesis [non-living pro- ducing living] logically insufficient to furnish proof of its occurrence, but it may be stated as a well-proved induction that the more careful the investigator, and the more complete his mastery over the endless practical difficulties which surround FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 109 experimentation on this subject, the more certain are his experiments to give a negative result ; while positive results are no less sure to crown the efforts of the clumsy and the careless. And again, The fact is, that at the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place, or has taken place, within the period during which the existence of life on the globe is recorded. * Professor Tyndall says : True men of science will frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life, t In another place he says : I here affirm, that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent life. \ And once more he declares that every attempt made in our day to generate life independently of antecedent life has utterly broken down. § After long and minute experimentation in reference to spon- taneous generation Pasteur gives this as his assured conclusion : There is no case known at the present day in which we can affirm that micro- scopic creatures have come into existence without germs, without parents like themselves. Those who pretend that they do have been the dupes of illusions, of experiments badly performed, vitiated by mistakes which they have not been able to perceive, or which they have not known how to avoid. J Professor Virchow, of Berlin, says : This generatio cequivoca [by which he means spontaneous generation] which has been so often contested and so often contradicted, is, nevertheless, always meeting us afresh. To be sure, we know not a single positive fact to prove that a generatio cequivoca has ever been made, that inorganic masses, such as the firm of Carbon & Co., have ever spontaneously developed themselves into organic masses. No one has ever seen a generatio cequivoca effected ; and whoever sup- poses that it has occurred is contradicted by the naturalist, and not merely by the theologian. . . . We must acknowledge that it has not yet been proved. IT * Encyclopedia Britannica ; article on Biology, t Fragments of Science, Vol. II.. p. 194, Belfast Address. % Nineteenth Century, March, 1878, p. 507. § Fragments 0/ Science, preface to the sixth edition, p. vi. \ Revue des Cours scientifique, 23 Avril, 1864, p. 265 ; article " Des Generations spontanees/* . H The Freedom 0/ Science in the Modem State, p. 36 (2d Ed.). HO CHIPS AND CHUNKS Professor Elliott Coues {Biogen, p. 39) says: If life inhered in matter as the necessary result of any particular composition of matter death would follow decomposition and be otherwise impossible ; but, in fact, the reverse is the actual sequence of events. That is to say, death ordinarily precedes decomposition, thus showing that life does not depend upon matter any more than the existence of matter depends upon the presence of life. But if life do not inhere in matter then the evolution theory cannot be main- tained. There is a " break " and a " gap." Any one " break," any- where, any one 4< gap," however small, is fatal to the evolution hypothesis. The late Robert Patterson, in his very able book on the Errors of Evolution, says : There is no force in nature able to inspire life. On the contrary, all the forces of nature are antagonistic to life, and the struggle for existence, which Mr. Darwin so eloquently describes, is the struggle of life against the powers of nature. Every drop of water conveyed by a plant from the ground to the top of the leaf, every step or motion made by any animal, is a struggle against the force of gravitation. The laws of chemical affinity, appealed to as the great forces in evolving life, operate in exactly the contrary direction ; they cause death and decomposition when life ceases its resistance. The gastric juice will eat its way through the stomach which secreted it when that stomach has ceased from the struggle of life. The very familiar illustration of the difficulty of preserving dead vegetables and meats attests the destructive power of the forces of matter if not counteracted by some superior intelligence. Mr. Spencer pompously announces the heat of the sun as the sufficient force originating all life. But the sun might shine on his solutions of smelling salts to all eternity without producing the smallest fungus, unless the seeds were previously there. The forces of inorganic matter can destroy, but cannot possibly impart or originate, life." — Errors of Evolution, p. 193. XVII.—IS EVOLUTION SCIENTIFIC? The most trustworthy science, then, shows us that the theory of evolution has to disprove what has been accepted as proved in other departments before it can make itself acceptable. In other words, a great objection to evolution is that it is unscientific, on the authority of some of the most trustworthy scientists. Let us push aside any difficulty for want of time and assume room in duration large enough for any thing; shall we then be rid of all difficulty? Let us see. Evolution is supposed to have aid from Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of species. But it is FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. m not a theory; it is merely an hypothesis. "Suppose things were thus, then species must have originated thus." With extraordinary industry and skill Mr. Darwin gathered and stated a vast number of what he believed to be facts; and if they all be admitted they show that only by the constant superintendence of human intellect over the application of human industry is it possible to make great varieties of pigeons ; but (i) the very moment the human super- intendence is withdrawn the pigeons begin to go back to the origi- nal, natural type, domestication never having been able to produce forms of animals that are self-perpetuating ; and (2) no skill of domestication and differentiating ever has made any species pass into another species ; for instance, any line of doves produce the first eagle. If the changes in the universe are going forward on the plan of evolution there must be an advance from the poorer to the better, from the lower to the higher. But the facts are against this. The planet shows that multitudes of species have degenerated. Even man has degenerated. Is not the first of every thing, as a rule, better than most that follows? The phrase "the survival of the fittest" has no scientific support. It is a grim satire on nature, unless evolution teach that the worst is the fittest. When the wheat and the tares are sown in the field we know which chokes the other. Now, if there be no stays or stops, every thing must reach the bottom to which it tends, and evolution provides for no such pause and upward turning caused by the incoming of some force from without. Indeed, whatever proof of improvement and upward movement can be produced is a proof which stands adverse to the evolution hypothesis, because it shows the incoming of something from outside of nature. Such a simple fact as that no grain which now forms food for men, such as corn or wheat, has ever been found in a wild state, but is all the product of cultivation, which means the coming in of a force ab extra, and that such grain would dis- appear if the culture were withdrawn for a short time, stands against the hypothesis of evolution. That we may see how unscientific that hypothesis is, consider that that only is science which is known and capable of proof. Guesses, prophecies, assumptions, count for nothing in this court. 112 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Now go back to the definition given in the beginning of this treatise. Mr. Spencer starts out with the assumption of " a limited mass of homogeneous matter." The grossness of this assumption will be apparent when you reflect that up to A. D. 1885 there has not been discovered any homogeneous matter in the universe. If there be such a thing as homogeneous matter must it not be protoplasm, which is assumed to be the material basis of life? Pro- toplasm has been carefully examined microscopically by our ablest scientific men, and this is the result. Professor Huxley says that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the four elements — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen — in very complex union.* In whatever form it appears, " whether fungus or oak, worm or man," its elements are the same; and when life in it becomes extinct it " is resolved into its mineral and lifeless con- stituents." f It is admitted, of course, that carbon, hydrogen, oxy- gen, and nitrogen are lifeless bodies, and that they all exist previous to their union ; " but when they are brought together," says Pro- fessor Huxley, " under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm ; and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." % It is a mere dream. If you can find a substantial phenix, or griffin, or chimera, you may find homogeneous matter. We are told that it is not on this planet, nor anywhere in the solar system, so far as man has been able to discover. Nay, while all along we have been supposing that there might be at least a hatful of it some- where in the universe, the spectroscope has torn the bottom from Mr. Spencer's definition and spilled all the sense it seemed to have. He must first show, what no man yet has been able to do, that there either is, or has been, homogeneous matter, or surrender his definition of evolution. When the chief apostle of his religion can- not define its fundamental doctrine we must decide that he at least cannot prove its truth. When you examine Mr. Huxley's definition you must consign it to the same fate. He assumes what has not been proved, the primi- tive nebulosity of the universe. He assumes, what has not been proved, * Lay Sermons, p. 130 \ Ibid., p. 131. \Ibid., p. 135. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. H 3 that the molecules of that original nebulosity possessed forces. He further assumes, what has 7iot been proved, that there was mu- tual interaction between those forces. And he further assumes, what has not been proved, that that interaction was according to definite laws. The hypothesis of the " primitive nebulosity of the universe," as Professor Huxley calls it, rests upon the assumption of the gradual cooling of the sun and of all the planets. The Nebular Hypothesis is briefly this : That the space now occupied by the solar system was originally filled by an evenly-diffused mass of nebulous matter, which received a rotary motion. Under the attraction of its parts condensation goes on, accelerating the rotation. Under mechanical laws rings are formed, be- coming spheres, and thus the planets and their satellites, moving in the same plane and at proportionate distances, come into being, the central mass, as it con- tracts, giving off light and heat, and remaining the controlling center. — Rev. Dr. Drury, Vedder Lectures, 1883. Plainly, to be sure of any increase or decrease of the temperature of a body we must know its present heat-state, and also its former heat-state. We do not know any thing of the former. In terms of the thermometer it has been variously given from 1,561° to 5,344,840° Fahrenheit, the former by Pouillet, the latter by Secchi, two famous scientists. Consider the immense difference. It is as if two nautical observers should give the place of the ship, one at the South Pole, and the other at the equator. Who has ever shown us any method of arriving with accuracy at the heat of the sun ? And yet we must know that or else we cannot say that the sun is cool- ing. Men adopt a theory which cannot stand without a certain assumption, and then they make that assumption, although there is not a particle of knowledge to sustain it : and they call that science ! Here, then, we rest the case, without having exhausted the evi- dence. We do not deny the truth of the hypothesis of evolution and have not attempted to prove it false. But we insist that those who bring it forward are bound to prove it true, and they are very far from having done so. Nor do we deny the hypothesis that the moon is a green cheese, nor shall we try to prove it false. But when those who affirm that it is true bring no more proof for its truth than the materialistic scientists produce for evolu- ii4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS tion we shall not admire our green-cheese friends when they sneer at men of brains who simply demand satisfactory, rational, scientific proof. Whether the theory of evolution be true or false it is apparent that at this stage of the discussion, after a century of hard work to sustain it, the only verdict that can be given, a verdict of the truth of which even evolutionists must feel sensible, is the Scotch verdict of Not Proven. PART II. I.— BUDDHA, JESUS. AND EVOLUTION. BECAUSE I did not desire to discuss any topic that bore even the semblance of close alliance with the religious sentiment I did not take up the existence of Jesus in human history — a fact that must be just as much considered in forming a cosmic theory as any other fact. If it had been introduced it would have followed the section on " Genius." While the greatest geniuses are rare, so that one might say that there have been not more than a score who have so touched the highest water-mark of power as to leave there the traces which all succeeding generations should read as theirs, there have been those twenty, and evolution has no place for their existence. Genius has never been evolved. But beyond the highest of these there is a phenomenon in humanity which any theory of the universe must account for before it can be accepted. It is the appearance, in the human race, of Jesus of Nazareth, a person who was not a genius. Now, this is not a question of theology or religion in this discussion. From his name let all such thoughts be separated. But a cosmic theory must have room for every phenomenal thing and person, and science must provide a place for Jesus as for Laura Bridgman. Just as he holds his position and posture in history as a man, he must be accounted for as much as Napoleon, or Luther, in regard to whom, as in regard to him, there is a great diversity of opinion. How did he come? If the theory of evolution be true our humanity must have been differentiating itself so that at last it FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. n$ naturally produced him such as he was. This brings a number of questions which must be satisfactorily answered before evolution can be accepted. 1. Why was not Jesus naturally produced earlier? If it be answered that humanity had not previously reached the proper stage of development then it must be explained how that was the fitting time which marked the most degraded and rotten stage of humanity ; when man had been for ages, according to fact and con- trary to evolution, growing morally worse, until he had reached a point at which he was so bad that he had never been so bad before, and never has been since. And it must be explained how, when there was not a single great man known upon the planet, and after there had been such men as Caesar and x\lexander, Socrates and Plato, there appeared as the product of humanity the person acknowledged by many millions of men to have been, taken all in all, the greatest man that ever lived. Where were the preparatory ''studies" for this great production? What ancestry had he? Who among them exhibited "the promise and potency" for the production of him ? 2. Why has not a second Jesus been produced? Humanity has not lost any capacity of evolving. It has had eighteen more cent- uries, in which it has grown much better than it was at the coming of Jesus, by causes which were manifestly set in operation by him, the withdrawal of which, so far as we can scientifically calculate, would drop the world back to the low level at which his advent found it. Have not men a right to demand that humanity shall exhibit to-day a man as superior to Jesus as Jesus was to the noblest specimen of manhood extant eighteen centuries before His time ? Where is there a man who can be compared to him with- out a shock not only to the moral sense but the scientific intelli- gence of mankind ? But these two questions must be satisfactorily answered before evolution can account for the existence of the most phenomenal specimen of humanity. And the most phenomenal man comes as much into the argument as any other phenomenal animal. If, however, because of religious prejudice, or for any other reason, good or bad, it be denied that Jesus was an incomparable Il6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS man, then it may be demanded to have named the man who may be compared to him. Is Buddha named ? Then he was inferior to Jesus, or his equal, or his superior. If his inferior, or equal, the citation of his name is impertinent to the argument. Granting there was such a personage as Buddha, and that he had a defined history like Jesus of Nazareth, or Caesar of Rome, if it can be shown that Buddha or Sakyamuni was superior to Jesus the argu- ment is greatly strengthened. His history antedates that of Jesus by several centuries, and yet Jesus, it is claimed, is the inferior. Moreover, there are two men, having no connection on the line of heredity, who rule more millions of men this day than any other two men that have ever lived ; and, according to the assumption, the later is the inferior of the earlier ; and during the twenty-three centuries which have elapsed since the first appeared there has been no one who has approximated his altitude among all the sons of men. A theory which can take no account of such phenomena in human history as Buddha and Jesus may be true, but it cannot be accepted as proved. That is the case with evolution. II.— NATURAL SELECTION. " Natural Selection !" How often we find these two words spelled with capital initials, as if they constituted a proper name ; a significant proper name! Now, who is this Natural Selection? Who ? You cannot ask what. It is not a thing. It is a person, if the name be significant. There is never selection without mind, and mind cannot be conceived apart from personality. For in- stance, if one should say " the creation of man began the moment when psychical variations became of so much more use to our ancestors than physical variations that they were seized and en- hanced by natural selection to the comparative neglect of the latter," we should feel that he was talking nonsense, if he did not mean that our ancestors had exerted their intellect in making the comparison necessary for choice, and after that had exerted their will in seizing and holding those traits. If he meant that in matter the power to choose resides we should regard him as confounding mind and matter in such a way as to render his utterances unworthy of attention, that his statement was a guess, without a single soli- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. no- tary fact in nature to sustain it, and much that looks quite in the opposite direction. " Natural Selection " is a phrase made of two words, which, in the senses ordinarily assigned them, are mutually exclusive. And yet in this enlightened age there are people who worship what Mr. John Fiske calls a blind process known as Natural Selection, the deity that slumbers not nor sleeps (Desliuy of Man, p. 23; . III.— A WEAK POINT. A weak point in the Darwin theory of the evolution of higher forms of life from lower ones, by natural selection and the survival of the fittest, was brought to the notice of the editor of the Christian Intelligencer by an intelligent gentleman. He said that according to the Darwinian doctrine man is the highest product of evolution, and, therefore, ought to exhibit natural selection in its highest and best exercise, and in him the survival of the fittest should have its supreme illustration. On the contrary, we find, as a rule, that men and women mate unwisely, select unhealthy, physically inferior, partners, and by their selections keep alive and transmit to de- scendants physical infirmities and diseases. Tall men marry short women, men of vigorous health marry women who are weaklings, intellectual men select unintellectual wives, and so on. Nothing is more common. Yet in the persons of those who are the very culmination of evolution there should be found the perfection of natural selection. How exceedingly rare such a selection is among men. And as to the survival of the fittest, it may be urged that the very opposite has been embodied in the proverb, found among all nations, that " whom the gods love die young." Constantly, worth- less, useless people live long. Of the majority of old men and women, known to be composed of very worthy people, it may be said they are not especially more fit to survive than were those of their generation who died in youth or middle age. What, then, is a theory good for which does not find in the creatures who are its climax an eminent illustration of its correctness, or the highest and most convincing proof of its accuracy? According to Darwinism, man ought to exhibit natural selection and the survival of the fittest in their perfection. Every body knows he does not. n8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS IV.— IMPORTANT UTTERANCES. ARGYLL. — The Duke of Argyll, in Primeval Man, p. 75, quotes the following opinion of Darwinism, held by Professor John Phillips (in Life : the Origin and Succession) : Every-where we are required by the hypothesis to look somewhere else ; which may fairly be interpreted to signify that the hypothesis every-where fails in the first and most important step. How is it conceivable that the second stage should be every-where preserved, but the first nowhere ? Sir William Dawson, F.R.S., F.G.S., the Principal of McGill University, Montreal, speaks, in the seventh edition (1882) of the Story of the Earth and Man, of the evolutionist doctrine as the strangest doctrine of humanity, and supported by vague analogies and figures of speech which indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalization. Rev. Dr. Drury : Evolution, regarded as descriptive of a process in nature, has much, we thus see, to commend it, but it ought to be distinctly remembered and emphasized that it is as yet a mere theory, and must not be regarded as having more than an hypothetical value. In whatever form it be held, whether that behind which in- fidels and agnostics hide and defend their unwillingness to believe, or that which many Christians hold in conjunction with their faith in God and the Bible, it must not be lost sight of that it is yet unproven, and may not properly be used for any other purpose, or in any other way, than is legitimate for an hypothesis. — Drury 's Truths and Untruths of Evolution, p. 21. Dr. Elam. — In a series of articles on Evolution, in the Con- temporary Reviezv, Vol. XXIX., the Doctor says : On a general survey of the theory of Darwin nothing strikes us more forcibly than the total absence of direct evidence of any one of the steps. There is an abundance of semi-acute reasoning upon what might have occurred under condi- tions which seem never to have been fulfilled. Bishop Ellicott. — This learned man, who is the editor of The Handy Commentary, expresses himself in plain terms on the present status of the doctrine of evolution. In his introduction to the Book of Genesis, he says : Evolution is very far from having attained to the rank of scientific verity ; it is at most an interesting and ingenious theory. Unfortunately for its temperate dis- cussion, evolution is now enwrapped by many of its partisans in the ugly pellicle of materialism, and for this there is in the Bible no place. While, therefore, I am content to leave all the processes of creation to those who make the material universe the object of their intelligent study, I object to their crossing beyond their proper limits, which they do in arguing that our enlarged knowledge of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. ug matter and its laws militates with a belief in a governing and law-giving mind ; for material science can penetrate no further than to the phenomena of nature. It is the noble teaching of the book of Genesis that creation was the work of an All-wise and Almighty intelligence, and that the Infinite Mind even called matter into being, and gave it those laws which scientific men study so wisely. I am content to believe every thing which they prove in their own domain ; but when they make assumptions in regions where they are but trespassers it is mere waste of time to dispute with them. I cannot say this without at the same time acknowl- edging the immense obligation under which theologians lie to the masters of the sciences of astronomy and geology ; for they have enlarged our ideas, brushed away many a crude popular fallacy, and enabled us to understand more and more of the perfect ways of God. GUYOT : Any length of time that Darwin might desire for his transformations would never suffice to make of the monkey a civilizable man. — Creation, p. 126. HiECKEL. — Dr. Haeckel, the greatest living exponent of evolution, said to a company of naturalists, in 1877, that the two principles of inheritance and adaptation explain the development of the manifold existing organisms, from a single organic cell ; dispensing forever with the need of a Creator, and moreover, a creature composed of only one of these omnipotent cells is shown by certain zoological inquiries to be possessed of motion, sensibility, perception, and will. — Quoted by Professor J. B. Ewing in the Tokio Course of Lectures, p. 101. Huxley : It is not absolutely proven that a group of animals having all the characters ex- hibited by species in nature has ever been originated by selection, whether artifi- cial or natural. — Lay Sermons, p. 226. St. Geore Mivart. — This able scientist says, in regard to Dar- win's doctrine of Natural Selection : I cannot hesitate to call it a puerile hypothesis. Theodore T. Munger, D.D. — This popular writer speaks of evolution as a finite system, a merely phenomenal section of the universe and of time, with no whe7ice, nor whither, nor why, a system which simply supplies man with a certain kind of knowledge, but solves no problem that weighs on his heart, answers no question that he much cares to ask, and throws not one glimmer of additional light on his origin, his nature, or his destiny. — Freedom of Faith, p. 26. Professor Piper : The French Academy, it seems, refused to acknowledge Darwin as a scientific man at all, declining to admit him a member of that body, on the ground that his so-called science was no science, and that it was made up for the most part of 120 CHIPS AND CHUNKS mere assumptions; and Dawson says, in his book entitled The Earth and Man, p. 330 : " Let any one take up either of Darwin's great books, or Spencer's Biology, and merely ask himself, as he reads each paragraph, ' What is assumed here, and what is proved?' and he will find the whole fabric melt away like a vision." Further he says : " The theory of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, as applied to man, though the most popular phrase of evolutionism at present, is nothing less than the basest and most horrible of superstitions. It makes man not merely carnal but devilish. It takes his lowest appetites and propensities, and makes them his God and creator." — Mind and Nature, firne, 1885. QUATREFAGES. — In his Natural History of Man (p. 70): While recognizing the convenience of Darwin's theory in the interpretation of a great number of facts he is obliged to reject it because it is irreconcilable with other facts but chiefly because in disaccord with physiological laws, such as the sterility of hybrids. Sir Wyville Thompson.— In Challenger Reports, Vol. L, this scientist declares that recent investigations of the abyssal fauna of the ocean by the ship Challenger refuse to give the least support to Darwinism. Tyndall. — Professor Tyndall says : Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant of the un- certainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional assent.— Scientific Use of the Imagination, p. 469. Van Benedin. — Professor Van Benedin, of the University of Louvain, quoting Oswald Heer, in Le Monde Primitive, says : The more we advance in the study of nature the more profound is our convic- tion that belief in an Almighty Creator . . . can alone resolve the enigmas of nature, as well as those of human life. VlRCHOW : As a matter of fact, we must positively recognize that there exists as yet a sharp line of demarkation between man and the ape. We cannot teach, we cannot pronounce it to be a conquest of science, that man descends from the ape or from any other animal, — Quoted By Joseph Cook, in Monday Lecture of April 15, 1878. VON BlSCHOFF. — This scientist is a specialist in comparative anatomy. He tells us that as he pursues his investigations in the comparison of man and the so-called anthropoid apes the difference between men and apes becomes great and fundamental. WlNCHELL. — Professor Winchell says (The Doctrine of Evolu- tion, p. 54) : The great stubborn fact which every form of the theory [natural selection] en- counters at the very outset is that, notwithstanding variations, we are ignorant of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. I2 i a single instance of the derivation of one good species from another. The world has been ransacked for an example, and occasionally it has seemed for a time as if an instance had been found of the origination of a genuine species by so-called natural agencies ; but we only give utterance to the admissions of all the recent advocates of derivative theories when we announce that the long-sought exfieri- me?itum cruets has not been discovered. V.— A VOICE FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM. Professor George E. Post, M.D., of the Syrian Mission, is a gentleman of superior scientific attainments. He visited the British Museum and met Mr. Etheridge, who is in charge of a department, and is acknowledged to be one of the foremost of British experts in his specialty. This gentleman gave his opinion on evolution. The following letter, sent to the Evangelist by a former colleague of Dr. Post, describes the interview : London, August 2, 1885. Yesterday I was in the Natural History Department of the British Museum. I had business touching some fossils which I found in the Latakia Miocene and Pliocene clay-beds, and about which I wrote an article that appeared in Nature last year. Mr. Etheridge, F.R.S., kindly examined and named them. I was anx- ious to hear what a first-rate working scientist, with perhaps the largest opportunity for induction in the world, would say on Darwinian evolution. So, after he had shown me all the wonders of the establishment, I asked him whether, after all, this was not the working out of mind and Providence. He turned to me, with a clear, honest look into my eyes, and replied: "In all this great museum there is not a 'particle of evidence of transmutation. Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation, and wholly unsupported by fact. Men adopt a theory and then strain their facts to support it. I read all their books, but they make no impression on my belief in the stability of species. Moreover, the talk of the great antiquity of man is of the same value. There is no such thing as a fossil man. Men are ready to regard you as a fool if you do not go with them in all their vagaries. But this museum is full of proofs of the UTTER FALSITY OF THEIR VIEWS." 122 CHIPS AND CHUNKS CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. [In 1881 (July 21) the American Institute of Christian Philosophy was organized at Greenwood Lake, N. J. It has since grown to an association of nearly 500 members. Its objects cannot be stated better than in its latest circular, which I here quote : "This Institute exists for the purpose of cultivating the study of the relations between science and religion, but mainly to produce and to circulate literature of a high order which shall antagonize the teachings of agnosticism, materialism, and every other form of false philosophy. " The need of such resistance to insidious as well as to open infidelity is clear to every person acquainted with current modern literature and with the subtle in- fluences which poison the minds of the young in our schools and colleges. "To promote its objects the Institute has meetings every month during the winter, and also summer schools, at both of which papers and lectures by able writers are presented and afterward published in its periodical organ, Christian Thought, and sometimes separately. To do this money is required. That money comes from membership fees and donations. " It is desirable to interest Christian men and women, learned and unlearned, all over the land, in the production, the circulation, and the reading of a literature which shall promote intellectual with religious culture. " It is not at all necessary that one shall be able to attend the meetings ; that is a small thing ; all the papers are printed and sent free to the members. The names and fees of ten thousand Christians, sent us in one year, would help us to push the battle to the gates. Each member should urge his friends to become members of the Institute as they would become members of the American Bible Society, that they may help to distribute a saving literature which they cannot produce. This will answer the two objections sometimes offered ; namely, that (1) the person solicited lives too far from the seat of the Society to attend the meetings, and (2) that he is not able to contribute any thing to its work. Let every Christian be urged to contribute (1) his name and (2) his fee. The Institute will take care of the rest. "There is no initiation fee. The annual subscription for members is five dollars. One hundred dollars will constitute a life member if contributed to the Endowment Fund, and fifty dollars, if given to the General Fund." As its first President I delivered several anniversary addresses which are here reproduced from Christian Thought, the organ of the Institute.] FIRST ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. [Delivered before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, at its Summer School, 21st of July, 1882.] It has been thought advisable to hold an anniversary meeting at the end of the first year of the existence of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. j 2 ^ The first year of the life of a child or an institution is not usually crowded with incidents that are startling, or even attractive ; but that first year, for either child or institution, is not the least impor- tant of its existence. It can do little to instruct the world or change the course or character of human events ; but it is usually crowded with the perils of teething, and other infantile difficulties, the surmounting of which gives some increased assurance of the continuance of the life of the child or the institution. As we have passed our first year we may find it useful to make a review of its history in face of the natural and rational challenge of the world, or of so much of the great world as cares any thing for us, of our raison d'etre. We commenced by setting before us seven objects, some of which we had in common with other organizations older than this Insti- tute. But we were compelled to share them by generic necessity. Ours was a case where a certain genus seemed necessary for our particular differentia. There are other societies which concern them- selves in the investigation of the most important questions of phi- losophy. There are others which engage themselves with the most important questions of science. Now we propose to do both, and to do so fully and impartially. We desire the gentlemen who pre- pare lectures for our courses and papers for our meetings to know that an examination of any scientific or philosophical question will be acceptable to us even if the discussion have no apparent bearing on questions theological or ethical. We believe that true religion must foster all honest investigation made on scientific principles. We cannot know too many things nor know any thing too well. As all accurate gathering of the real facts of the universe enriches religion, so all true scientific treatment strengthens religion. It may be years, it may be generations, before some well-ascertained fact can make good its relation to another ascertained fact — indeed, the ascertainments may lie ages apart ; but philosophy, the science of sciences, will by and by settle the relation and thus enhance the value of both facts. Indeed, the function of philosophy is that of a wise architect and master builder who knows how to work into his design and his structure every block of stone, however shaped. An honest, enthusiastic student of nature, smit with a love of worms, 124 CHIPS AND CHUNKS may devote his life to the investigation of the habits of his pet rep- tiles without dream or suspicion that he is gathering in store, for some one who is to follow, much that is to confirm or modify the existing conceptions of ethics and the prevailing system of theology. We wish it therefore to be understood that we shall give warm and cordial reception to those who come to us with the results of any investigation of any important question, in any department of sci- ence or philosophy. While this is one of our objects it would not be a sufficient reason for our existence if we had nothing beyond. Other institu- tions, with a zeal and ability which excite our admiration, and, we trust, will kindle our emulation, are doing that work and doing it well. But we set before us, as our distinctive work, which no other society claims, to give special attention to those questions of science and philosophy which bear upon the great truths revealed in Holy Scripture. It was very plainly seen that exceptions might be taken to this portion of the map we drew of the territory we meant to occupy. We foresaw that men would arise to say that thus we narrowed our field and took for granted that which was to be proved. And in point of fact they have done so in this initial year of our existence. We are not without our response. We may say, in the first place, that no institution can do every thing; that we shall not exclude — nay, shall gladly welcome — every honest contribution to science and philosophy in any of its departments ; but that as an institution we do consider some questions very much more important than others, and that while, as far as we can, we shall aid all institutions which are studying other questions, we shall give our main strength to those which are most important in our estimation. Each man must judge for himself the relative importance of any pursuit. As the times are, as the current of civilization is at present running, we think that sanitary questions are important, and there- fore we invited so competent a person as Mr. C. F. Wingate to give us the lecture which he entitled " Cleanliness and Godliness." We believe that the relation of literature to the people is a very impor- tant question, and have solicited the discussion thereof by so com- petent a writer as Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie. We believe that a FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 25 knowledge of the other orbs in our system is valuable ; that it is highly important that scholars know all that can be known of the heavenly bodies and the laws by which they are regulated, and that all men should have a general knowledge of astronomy, and there- fore have brought our learned Professor Young from his height of observation at Princeton to instruct, not only scholars learned in other departments, but also the young men and maidens at our Summer School who have come " to have a good time," and to whom we desire to give a better, so that those who come to flirt may stay to learn. These portions of this year's Syllabus will show that we sympa- thize with all study of all truth in all departments. But we say, in the second place, that these hearty welcomes to all intellectual workers are not to be interpreted into the supposition that we lose sight of the relative importance of different studies and intellectual productions. These are important, but not in our eyes so important as a study of the truths which lie below and support all fruitful labor in physical fields. If it be alleged that we take for granted certain things, we frankly admit the allegation, but deny that that is an objection. Our first postulate is that there are such things as truths in the universe. Of course we did not undertake to prove that proposition in our prospectus. In this, our first assumption, we addressed ourselves to what we believe to be myriads of our fellow-men who believe in the existence of truths. If any man hold no such belief he will not be expected to take interest in our work. Then we assume that there are some truths which are revealed to men — that is, capable of being learned by the human mind when it is taught. If there be men who believe that there is such a thing as a truth, but that both its existence and its significance are unknowable, that class of strange thinkers will perhaps take no interest in our work nor in the work of any society for scientific and philosophical pursuits. For, any body of men banded together to cultivate science as- sumes that there are such things as truths, and that these truths are where they can be found by the search, and can be perceived by the intelligence, and can be formulated by the logical understanding of men. So that in our second assumption we address multi- 126 CHIPS AND CHUNKS tudes of our fellow-men, of all lands and all religions and of no religion. Our third assumption was, that as in nature so in Holy Scripture there is a revelation of great truths. In our prospectus we did not stop to demonstrate that. We knew that we believed that proposi- tion, and we knew that there were millions who believed it, and that among those millions were men of the very highest intellectual abilities and attainments as well as men of the humblest mental endowments, men of elegant leisure as well as men pressed with the burdens of business. Of course the men who do not believe this will not only not become members of our Institute, but will not find themselves able to take any interest in our work. But there are so many who are of this way of thinking that if one tenth of them were enrolled in our Society it would be the most numerous institution on the face of the earth. There is — and it must not be supposed that we fail to see it — a fourth assumption ; namely, that the truths revealed in the New Testament and those revealed in the Old Testament and those revealed in the Older Testament all form a harmonious whole. There are those who do not believe this ; those who believe that all the truth in the universe lies in the physical world of which we have cognizance by our senses ; those who regard any pretension to revelation in the Christian Scriptures as contemptible, and those who seem to regard with hatred what are claimed to be " great truths in Holy Scripture." We can expect nothing from these except an opposition which we cannot deprecate because we invite it. But there are millions who believe the propositions embedded in our fourth assumption ; and we seek to organize from among those millions a company of some hundreds of workers who shall diligently set themselves to the task of exhibiting that existent harmony, so that whoso takes the Bible for a text will find nature a most instructive commentator, and whoso takes nature for the text shall find the most luminous help in the Holy Scripture. Now the very fact of our being Christians necessitates intellect- ually the belief contained in our fourth assumption, just as the belief in the supernatural necessitates the belief in the natural. To believe that in these sacred books, which are our rule of faith FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 27 and practice, there are truths which oppose or are opposed by other truths, such truths as are revealed in nature, would be to believe that either there is no God or that there are at least two ; but the fundamental proposition of the Christian religion is that there is a God and that there can be but one God. We believe that no one but God could have created the universe we see about us, and the Bible which we see before us, and the moral nature we feel within us. They must all, therefore, have but one author ; and the author who could create them must be omniscient, and therefore never either self-contradicted or confused either in thought or action. To what has been said may be added a few words extracted from an article by Professor Francis L. Patton, on the " American Insti- tute of Christian Philosophy," in the Presbyterian Review for July, 1882. This acute thinker says: " Some may be supposed to object to the quasi-sectarianism of the term Christian philosophy. But this criticism ought not to be pressed. For while we may go too far in conditioning Christianity by an antecedent philosophy it is useless to deny that there is a philosophy which is anti-Christian ; and in these days of hostility to revealed truth no apology should be needed for those who are drawn into active co-operation by their common faith in Christianity and their common love for philosophy." In prosecuting our work we may produce several results. We may modify our own manner of stating the great truths revealed in Holy Scripture, and perhaps our very conception of them. We trust we shall not be unwilling to do that. There would be no use of investigation, research, comparison, and banded co-operation if all the truths of the Bible were now known in all the ways in which they can possibly be known. As the bearing of any truth of nature upon a truth of the Bible will in a large measure depend upon the thoroughness of the investigation of both truths, and as successive generations of thinkers work with the advantage of the use of what was done by their predecessors, we must expect that the study of any science will advance the study of every science. Theology is a science just as geology is a science. The Bible and nature are facts of God; theology and geology are facts of man. Just as there are schools in physical science there will be schools in theology. Such an institute as ours must be catholic. We must welcome theolo- 128 CHIPS AND CHUNKS gians of different and even opposite schools ; and whether the study of scientific questions shall bring them more closely together or widen their separation, still we must go on in honest study of all questions that belong to science and philosophy. We may also modify the views of scientific men who are not Christians. They may come to see that being a Christian no more renders one a fool than being a scientist makes one a rascal. While they stand and challenge Christian scholars to defend their claims Christian scholars will stand and challenge them to make good their assertions. Candid theologians admit that very much more has been assumed in theology than has been made good, and candid students of physical science admit the same in their department. It is ear- nestly hoped by some of us that one good effect of our labors will be to cause men to hold only as hypothesis that which is hypothesis until it can be every-where accepted as a conclusion. One of the greatest obstructions to the progress both of science and religion is the unscientific and irreligious assumption of hypothesis as con- clusion. To-day the apparent contradictions between hypotheses in physical astronomy and hypotheses in geology are as great as are the apparent contradictions between hypotheses in geology and hypotheses in theology. There are some few things agreed upon by all parties. We trust that the labors of this Institute will enlarge the boundaries of the common property and enhance the wealth of the whole company of mankind. We do not feel our call to cultivate science and philosophy in all their departments so loud as our call to study the relations of one science to another, of all science to philosophy, and of the philosophy of all science to religion. Science has a fascination for so many minds that great is the company of those who are prosecuting scientific research in some manner. There is no special need of a new society to foster this work. But fewer persons are striving to get rid of the contradictions and conflicting hypotheses of men who are called scientists ; and still fewer are engaged in examining and discussing all supposed or real scientific results of modern research with reference to final causes and the fundamental principles of philosophy; and fewer still are they who are pursuing that study under the conviction that FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 29 all healthful and useful philosophical study must be carried forward under the conviction that there is one eternal God and that he is the Creator of all things. It is the work of this last-mentioned class which we wish most especially to foster. There are those who pursue scientific studies from a love of nature and of facts, without regard to the connections of facts or to general laws. The amateurs of this class resemble the children who love the story and care nothing for the moral and pay no attention to the style. The serious laborers of this class are useful. They may be likened to the makers of brick, who furnish what they can- not use ; for they do not know how to draw the design of a house or to lay the courses necessary for the erection of a structure, although they are far better handlers of brick- molds and burners of brick- kilns than the mason and the architect. It has been noticed that it rarely falls to anyone man to possess the double faculty of being an accurate scientist and a sound philosopher. The contemporary scientists whom we most trust to collect the facts in their several departments are conspicuously lacking in capability of reasoning on their own discoveries. Other men must handle their facts or those facts fail to minister to the advancement even of science. Then it is well known that there are those who prosecute studies in the physical sciences for the purpose of finding facts which they may work into some previously adopted scheme of theology or atheology. They will not acknowledge as a fact any discovery that seems to militate against their pet theory. But if the united testi- mony of many trustworthy examiners finally establishes the fact,, then they quietly ignore it. They throw away the stone that does not fit. This may be well in building a wall ; but in philosophy no scheme can stand in front of any one fact which flatly contradicts it. The fact will be very calm but very stubborn ; and it does not satisfy to have the theory ignore the fact, or when it perceives that the fact is contradictory to say contemptuously, " So much the worse for the fact." We hold that human reason is worth something. If this be true then human reason cannot have worked through more than half a century of centuries without having formulated at least one state- ment which embodies a theory against which there arises no contra- 9 I3 o CHIPS AND CHUNKS dictory fact. If human reason has not done this much then the logical understanding in man is worthless, and the exercise thereof may as well be utterly abandoned. Those who are willing to work with this Institute believe that there are at least two such state- ments ; namely, I. There is an eternal God, and, 2. he is the Cre- ator of all things. No atheist would wish to work with us. Those who believe that the progress of real science depends upon the cultivation of sound philosophy as the nexus of all science, and also that all trustworthy philosophy must have a basal truth and that that basal truth is the existence of an eternal Creator of all things, can work in this Institute, cultivating a vast field and producing such bread for the intellectual eater and such seed for the intel- lectual sower as shall make future generations rich and glad. It may be well to make a survey of the first year's work. On the 2 1st of July, 1 88 1, in the Hall of Philosophy at Warwick Wood- lands, a company of persons adopted a paper as " The Prospectus of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy," which indorsed the statement of the "objects" of the Institute, with terms of mem- bership and subscription, and have since given it wide publicity. The seat of the Institute was fixed in New York city, and pro- visional officers were elected. The number of members enrolled at organization was twenty-three. The first monthly meeting was held at Warwick Woodlands on the 28th of August, at which time the authorities of the Church of the Strangers tendered the free use of their parlors for the office and meetings of the Institute ; and there monthly meetings have been held for September, October, Novem- ber, and December, 1881, and January, February, March, April, May, and June of 1882. No advertisements of these meetings have been made, but postal-card notices have been forwarded to mem- bers in the vicinity of New York requesting them to invite their friends. At the first monthly meeting it was determined that there be no honorary memberships, in the sense of memberships for which no fee has been paid, and to that rule we have rigidly adhered. It was also determined that when the Institute had a proper number of members in any State there should be elected a vice-president for that State ; in accordance with which, during the year, the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 131 following gentlemen have been so elected ; namely, William H. Allen, LL.D., President of Girard College, for Pennsylvania ; John Bascqm, D.D., LL.D., President of the University of Wisconsin, for Wisconsin ; Hon. Kemp P. Battle, LL.D., President of the University of North Carolina, for North Carolina; Rev. Bishop Cheney, for Illinois ; Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., LL.D., President of the Union Theological Seminary, for New York; Mark Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., for Massachusetts; Rev. Bishop Hurst, for Iowa; General G. W. Custis Lee, President of Washington and Lee Uni- versity, for Virginia ; Rev. Bishop McTyeire, for Tennessee ; Patrick H. Mell, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor of the University of Georgia, for Georgia ; Francis L. Patton, D.D., LL.D., of the Princeton Theological Seminary, for New Jersey ; Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., President of Yale College, for Connecticut, and William A. Scott, D.D., LL.D., for California. At the monthly meeting for April it was determined to select honorary vice-presi- dents from among distinguished gentlemen residing in foreign countries who had become members of the American Institute ; in accordance with which resolution His Grace the Duke of Argyll, the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Shaftesbury, and the Most Rev. Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, were elected honorary vice- presidents. At the third monthly meeting a system of by-laws was adopted, and has remained unchanged, as originally published. It was also ordered that a quarterly publication be issued, and four numbers, with the title The Christian Philosophy Quarterly, have appeared, bearing the dates of October, 1881, and of January, April, and July, 1882. It has contained lectures delivered before the Summer School of Christian Philosophy at Warwick Woodlands in July, 1881, and also papers read before the several monthly meetings by the following gentlemen, whose names are given in the order of their articles; namely, Chas. F. Deems, President Porter, Professor Bowne, Professor Trowbridge, Professor Stephen Alexander, Professor Young, Rev. Amory H. Bradford, Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, Presi- dent Bascom, Professor Winchell, Rev. Dr. J. H. Mcllvaine, Rev. Dr. J. W. Mendenhall, Rev. Dr. Bevan, Professor B. N. Martin, Rev. S. S. Mar'tyn, and Rev. William L. Ledwith. The Quarterly *3 2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS is hereafter to be published by the Institute, which mails free copies to all its members and associate members. At the monthly meeting for November, which, on account of Thanksgiving, had been postponed to December I, there was presented the act incorporating the Institute, with the following trustees ; namely, Charles F. Deems, Howard Crosby, Amory H. Bradford, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and William O. McDowell. At the monthly meeting for January it was resolved to add to the "Seven Statements of Objects" the following as the eighth: " To interest Christian men and women, learned and unlearned, in the production, the circulation, and the reading of the literature which shall promote intellectual and religious culture." This para- graph was added because it was discovered that many persons be- lieved the Institute was intended to be limited in its membership to those who had some claim to be considered philosophers. It never had occurred to the founders that such a supposition would be enter- tained. If the new association had been termed the " Institute of Christian Philosophers" and a proclamation had been made through the length and breadth of the land inviting all the " Christian Philoso- phers" to offer themselves for membership, we feel quite sure that the offering would have been very small, and that it would not have included a single person who was present at the inception of this enterprise. It is certainly very desirable that the learned men who have dis- tinguished themselves in scientific and philosophical pursuits, and who have not found either science or philosophy a guide to athe- ism, should give to Christianity the service of enrolling themselves in our membership. The Institute would not presume to say to those honored gentlemen that it is their duty to do this much for our most holy faith ; but as their names are suggested we shall cer- tainly discharge our duty of inviting them to membership. Whether the men who are able to produce the literature which shall neutralize the deleterious influence of agnostic publications become our fellow-members or not, we shall endeavor to secure the prod- ucts of their genius and learning for our courses of lectures, papers, and publications. We do not feel so diffident in addressing Christian people who FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 33 are not learned and not able to produce the literature demanded by the times. These Christians have money at their command. It seems to us that if that be the case they might well reason that because they can contribute nothing else it is their plain and bounden duty to make an annual contribution of the money neces- sary to procure, to print, and to distribute the productions of men who, like Agassiz, " have not had time to make money " because they have been making the scientific acquirements necessary to withstand the assaults of philosophy, falsely so called, on our most holy faith. We wish it every -where understood, that those of us who are already in the Institute understand membership therein to make for the member no other claim than that he gives his sanction to the ob- jects of the Institute, and his money to circulate a literature which shall promote the advancement of both science and Christianity. The most modest man may make that claim ; and the layman most un- learned and least able to produce one of the lectures of this course should cheerfully hold himself ready to give them the widest circu- lation through our schools and colleges, that they may be preserva- tive of our young men who are rising into positions of influence. There is no more propriety in a man's excusing himself from becom- ing a member of the Institute because he cannot produce lectures or papers fit to take their place in our courses than there is in a man's declining to become a member of the American Bible Society because he cannot produce a Bible. And now, as I have been the Provisional President of the Insti- tute through the first year of its existence, perhaps I may be expected — if not, I shall make free — to give the benefits of my experience and observation in the shape of advice to the present membership, with a view to the consolidation and enlargement of the Institute. . . . And now, ladies and gentlemen, my year's work as your Provis- ional President has been accomplished. You have my hearty thanks for the distinction you have conferred on me ; and I do not thank you for any thing I have not received. I should not have been fit for my place if I had not been thoroughly penetrated by the conviction that you made me President, not because you wished to say that you believed me to be much of a Christian or 134 CHIPS AND CHUNKS any thing of a philosopher, but because you knew that I most heartily and sincerely embraced the system of religion known as " Christian," that I was greatly interested in the progress of scientific pursuits, that I certainly believed that there is no conflict between science and religion, and that, if I accepted the presidency of the Institute, I would work faithfully for all its interests to the best of my ability. This I have honestly done ; and, while it often wore me in the doing, now that it is over I thank you most cordially for the privilege of doing the work. In conclusion, let me express the hope that when you come to the election of officers for the next year you will find for your President one who can give to the Institute more time, more ability, and more money than I have been able to contribute, and, above all, one whose contributions to science and philosophy shall impart to the chair of the presidency a luster which, you all know as well as he does, the Provisional President has not been able to bestow. SECOND ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. [Delivered before the Summer School of Christian Philosophy, at Atlantic Highlands, N. J., 4th August, 1883, and repeated at Richfield Springs, N. Y., 25th August, 1883.] In coming to the close of the second year of the history of our Institute it may be well to recur to matters which concern the great work in which we are engaged. Darwin in Westminster Abbey. Just before our Anniversary Meeting of last year one of the most conspicuous figures in the circle of the students of science disap- peared from the scene of mortal investigation and discoveries. On the nineteenth day of April, A. D. 1882, Charles Darwin was laid near Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. That is a simple statement of what appears to have been only the interment of a dead man. But it is a fact the significance of which will grow with years. Isaac Newton was a great scientist of the seventeenth century, and Charles Darwin a great scientist of the nineteenth century. The former was an able supporter of the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 35 Christian faith, and the latter is not known to have ever given it any voluntary aid by the exercise of his abilities. He was quick- sighted, industrious, and laborious. He enriched the treasury of human knowledge. The result of his research led him to the adoption of a certain theory as to the origin of man. His theory, or some version of it, was used as an argument against Christianity. The impression was generally made that no one could be a Dar- winian and a Christian at the same time. If the word Darwinian included many crude theories that were propagated under the name the statement was true. And so for years the cry of multitudes of babblers who were opposed to Christianity had filled the air. It was, " Up with Darwinism — down with Christianity!" If Christian scholars challenged the conclusions which Charles Darwin drew from the facts which seemed established the army stragglers of the Darwinian camp hooted at them ; and if they assailed the absurd theories which attempted to get themselves footing under the name of a man to whom science acknowledged its indebtedness the jeers and howlings with which these men filled the air were frightful to children and amusing to adults. If a man would not tolerate the claims of so venerable a religion as Christianity he was not called " intolerant ; " he was complimented as " liberal." But if scholarly Christians, striving to prove all things, that they might hold fast that which is good and true, and therefore making their intellectual progress with caution, showed any unwillingness to trust themselves to the thin plank of some slender hypothesis thrown over the dash- ing stream of some profound difficulty, these cautious Christians were called " intolerant." Let the men who speak of the intolerance of Christianity consider these facts : Mr. Darwin owed his education to the Christian schools. He pursued a certain line of studies. He reached certain results of hypotheses. They were correct or incorrect. They were op- posed to Christianity or not antagonistic thereto. They were read and known of all men. Christian scholars knew them as well as Mr. Darwin did. The chief shrine of one great section of Chris- tianity is Westminster Abbey, in London. The guardians of that structure are Christian scholars. These men gave official permission for the interment of Charles Darwin near the dust of Isaac Newton. i3<5 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Now, one of two things follows — either the teachings of Darwin were in accordance with the teachings of Christianity or else the Christianity of the nineteenth century can never again be accused of intolerance by any who are not perversely uncandid. If it should be insinuated that the authorities of Westminster Abbey acted on their personal feelings, and did not represent the spirit of our mod- ern Christianity, this is to be replied : To the best of our knowledge and belief no quarterly, monthly, weekly or daily publication in the interest of Christianity, over any responsible Christian name, has uttered the slightest insinuation of condemnation of this West- minster interment. Where, now, is the "intolerance?" How have the haters of Christ and his religion showed tolerance? Suppose Charles Darwin had even been fool enough to father all the bastard theories that have been a-tramp in his name, and yet because of the real value of his real work in the field of science Christianity entombs him with defenders of the faith who were very much more illus- trious as scientists than himself, what verdict must the impartial world give to that act, if not the verdict of the highest proper ap- preciation of science by Christianity? That Christianity indorses any thing taught by Mr. Darwin which is really or even apparently antagonistic to Christianity, and especially that Christianity indorses the driveling, idiotic teachings of many who go under Mr. Darwin's name, is simply absurd. It is just as absurd as if, because Westminster Abbey had given place to John Wesley and his brother Charles, the Church of England should be supposed to indorse not only the nobler forms of Wes- leyanism, but also all the small and sometimes ridiculous sects which claim John Wesley's honored name. And now we turn upon these whirling and howling dervishes who strive to conceal their folly by assuming the name of science, and we demand of them to know whether, if they had a shrine in which to entomb the scientific men that departed this life, they would admit men of science who where Christians. Would not the bare fact that the man was a Christian, no matter what his attain- ments might be in science, exclude him from a place in the West- minster Abbey of infidelity? If any man ridicule that question, upon FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 137 reflection we join in the laugh ; for it is simply absurd to think of any thing like a Westminster Abbey growing up from the midst of the vain babblers who are chattering about the intolerance of Christianity. On the minds of all the nobler men engaged in science, who at the same time have not yet embraced Christianity, there must come a solemn sense of the breadth as well as the depth of our religion, as on the floor of Westminster Abbey, near Newton's honored dust, they stand beside the grave of Charles Darwin. Important Document. Soon after Mr. Darwin's death there was published a letter writ- ten by him to a student at Jena, in whom the study of Darwin's book had raised religious difficulties. At first there were doubts as to the genuineness of the paper, which, however, was at last con- ceded. This melancholy document is dated June 5, 1879, anc * was published in the number for October, 1882, of the Rundschau, in a lecture by Professor Haeckel on " Die Naturanschauung von Dar- win, Goethe, and Laplace." The authenticity of the letter is vouched for by Professor Haeckel, who is entirely familiar with Mr. Darwin's handwriting. This is the letter: "Sir : I am very busy, and am an old man in delicate health, and have not time to answer your questions fully, even assuming that they are capable of being an- swered at all. Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other, except in as far as the habit of scientific investigation makes a man cautious about accepting any proofs. As far as I am concerned I do not believe that any revelation has ever been made. With regard to a future life, every one must draw his own con- clusions from vague and contradictory probabilities. Wishing you well, I remain, your obedient servant, Charles Darwin." The whole weight of his character and attainments Mr. Darwin throws into the scale against Christianity. He will be quoted by thousands of young men to justify their neglect not only of Chris- tian studies, but also of Christian duties. Let such young men give careful examination to this record. See its admissions. It admits its writer to be old and in delicate health, and the whole tone is of one who is sadly invalided. This naturally gifted old man as he sinks toward the grave regards worms as a more important study than the greatest figure in all human history J 138 CHIPS AND CHUNKS As if science had nothing to do with humanity, but only with in- organic things and insensate forces, or, at the highest, with the orders of living things below man, and this after he had written on " the Descent of Man." If Canon Farrar were a person given to sarcasm the text from which he preached in Westminster Abbey on Mr. Darwin's death might seem to have been employed as a grim joke. It was, " And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." (1 Kings iv, 33.) But he said he had not time to settle the most important questions concerning the race of which he was a member. That statement should deprive his letter of all weight upon Christianity. Suppose he had had tenfold more intellectual power than fell to him, or any other man, the statement which shows that he had not examined the questions with w'frich religion is con- cerned should set aside his testimony. In a court of law, in some great steam-boat suit, for instance, if a question turned upon mechan- ics and the Chief-Justice of the United States were a witness, and should affirm that he had not time to answer the questions fully, even assuming that they are capable of being answered at all — that law and mechanics have nothing to do with each other except as law makes a man cautious about accepting proofs — would his testi- mony have the slightest weight with an intelligent juror? There are men, the equals intellectually of the Chief-Justice of the United States, as he himself would frankly admit, who have had time to study mechanics and who are capable of answering questions in that department. They are the men to call to the stand. There are men who are Charles Darwin's equals in intellect, who have had time and ability to examine this question. Their testimony is worth something on this subject, while Mr. Darwin's is worth noth- ing, not because he had not ability, but because he had not time, or had not inclination, to examine this branch of human study. It is admitted on all hands that it is no disparagement to any man's intel- ligence to have his testimony set aside in matters of which he con- fesses he has no knowledge. But, having so confessed, does it not glaringly reveal that lack of logical discrimination which was such a conspicuous defect in Mr. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 139 Darwin, that he should immediately make a most dogmatic state- ment about the very thing of which he acknowledges his ignorance? " Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other ! " This old man, very busy, and in very delicate health, makes this very positive assertion. Has he studied science as little as he studied Christ ? Certainly not, else he would not be able to say any thing about either ; and his fame rests on his scientific studies. Has he studied Christ as much as he has studied science? He owns that he has not. Then what right has he to express an opinion on the subject ? Yet he dogmatizes ridiculously. " Science and Christ nothing to do with each other?" Then what has science" to do with ? " Are there any phenomena which science must not examine ? Has science to do with the worm at my feet, with the stone beneath my feet, with the evanescent thermometric phe- nomena about my person, yet nothing to do with a phenomenal man whose appearance in the midst of the ages has changed the whole face of philosophy, science, art, and civilization ? Really we might be curious to know what limit Mr. Charles Darwin puts to science. But there seem to be no limits to his disposition to dogmatize in his old age and failing health about things of which he confesses himself ignorant. He proceeds to tell the young student at Jena something on the subject of revelation : " I do not believe that any revelation has ever been made." " Ever " covers measureless dura- tion. Mr. Darwin is equal to the task not only of boldly expressing a definite opinion in regard to that of which he confesses ignorance, but also of oracularly including all time and space in his opinions. There is in the world, and was known to Mr. Darwin, that which makes claim to be " a revelation." Those claims have been ex- amined by the greatest minds in the later centuries and admitted. Had Mr. Darwin examined those claims ? If he had, and they had appeared inconclusive, then there was no obligation so imperative upon him as to exhibit the ground on which he rejected them. No other question of science — for this is a question of science — was so important to be settled. No study of species or individual equaled this in importance. If he had not examined those claims of revela- tion and yet had fixed opinions, what weight should we attach to I 4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS such opinions on a subject of which he was ignorant, of such a busy old man in delicate health ? But the secret of this inconsistency came out later. The letter to a student at Jena induces Dr. Robert Lcwins to write to the Jour- nal of Science : Before concluding I may, without violation of any confidence, mention that, both viva voce and in writing, Mr. Darwin was much less reticent than in his letter to Jena. For, in answer to the direct question I felt myself justified, some years since, in addressing to that immortal expert in biology as to the bearing of his re- searches on the existence of an anima or soul in man, he distinctly stated that, in his opinion, a vital, or "spiritual " principle, apart from inherent, somatic energy, had no more locus standi in the human than in the other races of the animal king- dom — a conclusion that seems a mere corollary of, or indeed a position tanta- mount with, his essential doctrine of human and bestial identity of nature and genesis. This is the upshot of the whole system*— men and brutes have identity, mind and soul are nothing more than instinct greatly de- veloped, but still showing only such intelligence as is exhibited by climbing plants and earth-worms, so that there is no moral respon- sibility and no assured future to a man or to mankind ! And this is a discovery which we are asked to believe to be equal to New- ton's discovery of the law of gravitation ! Poor old man ! On the question of his existence beyond the grave he knew nothing but " vague and contradictory probabilities," and he had not time to determine which were weightier, and so he whose name has been most spoken in scientific circles during the last quarter of a century of his life died in the dark, and in the cold. If this be all that such a system can give, the world of human hearts now hungering for bread will certainly reject this stone by whatsoever hand it may be offered. Allen in Girard College. The entombment of Mr. Darwin in Westminster naturally recalls another incident which may seem in contrast and suggest lessons. In the city of Philadelphia there is a college amply built and en- dowed by a man who is claimed by the opponents of Christianity. The founder, Stephen Girard, provided in his will for the perpetua- tion of the endowment on the express terms that no clergyman of any denomination, Catholic or Protestant, should be admitted to FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 141 the grounds or permitted to enter the college. The late president of that college, William H. Allen, LL.D., died. He was a man of extraordinary culture, as well as of remarkable ability. He was a Christian scientist, and he had been honored by the highest recog- nition the American Christians can bestow upon a layman in being elected to the presidency of the American Bible Society. As a scientific man he would have honored membership in any philo- sophical or scientific association. He was also one of the vice- presidents of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy. Upon assuming the presidency of Girard College he felt himself shut in from intercourse with his Christian brethren who were eccle- siastics. When he was a professor of natural sciences in one of our colleges he had a pupil whom he impressed powerfully, and by the fas- cination of his methods of teaching drew the youth to scientific pur- suits, which he has never since wholly abandoned. By an accident in the laboratory, which Professor Allen always charged to himself, although his pupil never did, the young man was so seriously injured that at one time his life was despaired of. But he recovered, and afterward became professor in a university. Between the two men there grew a very strong friendship. The young professor became a clergyman, and on a visit to Philadelphia called to see President Allen at Girard College. He was refused admittance. W T hen Dr. Allen learned who was in the porter's lodge he rushed to meet his former pupil, his face all aglow with excitement, and exclaimed, " Does it not seem a shame that I live in a house which you cannot enter! " If this young man had been a liar, a thief, an adulterer, or a murderer, he might have had free access ; but he was a Christian clergyman. The president of Girard College, taken suddenly so ill within the precincts that he could not have been removed, might have lingered there and died without being able to look into the eyes of his father, his brother, or his son, if those gentlemen had been living and had been in orders in a Christian Church. He could neither have re- ceived nor given parting benedictions. He would have been cut off from intercourse with his spiritual adviser. As it was, the remains of this great man had to be carried out of the college to receive the decencies of a Christian funeral at the hands of the ministers of the religion he professed. I 4 2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS And this is the " liberality " of the opponents of Christianity ! Now, suppose a case. Suppose some rich Christian should die and by bequest found an institution of any kind and perpetuate the endowment thereof on the exclusion of every professed teacher of science, what would then be thought or said ? Or, suppose that by the terms of the will there should be excluded from the grounds and buildings any man who did not believe in the plenary inspira- tion of the Holy Scriptures and the divine rulership of Jesus over the universe of matter and of mind, what would then be thought and said? If there be any person who can produce on the side of Christians an example of illiberality which can match that which is seen in Allen dead in Girard, or on the side of anti-Christians an example of liberality which can be painted as the companion picture to Darwin buried in Westminster, it is that gentleman's turn to speak next. Pasteur among "The Immortals." Among the incidents of the past year it is natural that Christian scholars should revert with interest to the reception into the French Academy, into the company of the forty so-called " Immortals," of M. Pasteur, the clebrated Christian scientist. Succeeding to the chair of Littre, the late distinguished Positivist, he owes his place to no favoritism, but has won it by his commanding talents and learn- ing. Called by the custom of the Academy to pronounce a eulogy on his predecessor, M. Pasteur is represented as having captivated his brilliant audience by his modesty, while he spoke nevertheless with the authority of a savant. The fact that M. Pasteur openly acknowledges that in all his discoveries he sees the hand of God makes the following words remarkable, as having been uttered by a renowned unbeliever in regard to a scientist who is a professed Christian. It was M. Renan who thus addressed M. Pasteur : There is something that we can recognize in the most diverse tendencies, some- thing which belongs alike to Galileo, Pascal, Michael Angelo, and Moliere, some- thing which forms the sublimity of the poet, the depth of the philosopher, the fascination of the orator, and the divination of the savant. This indefinable affla- tus, sir, we have found in you — it is genius. No one has traversed with a step so pure as yours the circles of elementary nature. Your scientific life is like a lumi- nous train in the great darkness of the infinitely small, in those deepest abysses of being where life springs. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 43 If the good and gifted M. Pasteur has read in the Revue des Deux Mondes of November, 1882, the last of the series of articles which M. Renan has been writing on his own life it must have taken all the sweetness out of the compliment. In that article M. Renan says : Were I to begin my life over again I would change nothing in it. ... A cer- tain lack of frankness in the commerce of life will be forgiven to me by my friends ; they will attribute it to my clerical education. I admit that in the first part of my life I told lies often enough, not for gain's sake, but on account of my natural goodness, also through contempt, and from the false idea which I always had to present things in a way that one could understand them. Oftentimes my sister forcibly showed me the inconveniences of acting in this way, and finally I ceased so to do. Since 1851 I do not believe I have uttered a single lie, except naturally some entertaining ones, pure entrapelias, some officious ones, and some for politeness' sake, which all casuists permit, and the little literary subterfuges forced upon me, in view of a superior truth, by well-balanced sentences, etc. He is not positive that he has not lied since 185 1 ; but he thinks he has not. Now, a man whose " natural goodness " made him a " liar," on his own confession, through so many years of his life, can scarcely be supposed to have so suddenly become so much worse {nemo repente turpissimus /) as to have descended to the baseness of truth ! How much " officiousness '' may have entered into his com- pliment of M. Pasteur no one can tell, but its real truth all who know the new academician will admit, whether it was uttered for politeness' sake or otherwise. But Renan's admission of " literary subterfuges " renders all his writings worthless except as specimens of rhetoric. Any thing he may have said for or against Jesus or the apostles may have been a mere " literary subterfuge." The President of the British Association. The meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science closed the first year of its second half century at Southamp- ton. Its president was Dr. C. W. Siemens. In introducing his suc- cessor Sir J. Lubbock said that " the ruling idea of Dr. Siemens's life had been to economize and utilize the forces of nature for the benefit of man," and called attention to the fact that to him we owe various fruitful improvements in the practical applications of electricity — the first electric railway, the electrical transmission of power, anastatic printing, the chronometric governor, the regene- 144 CHIPS AND CHUNKS rator engine and furnace, and the regenerator gas furnace. The address of Dr. Siemens was masterly, and was full of practical thought and scientific information. . It contained none of the crudi- ties and unscientific credulities which have disfigured the addresses of some of his predecessors. It taught the comforting lesson that God is a willing and ready co-operator with every earnest, honest, humble laborer, and it gave many illustrations of this principle. It was pleasant to hear such a man as Dr. Siemens conclude his ad- dress from the chair of the president of the British Association by a reference to the conservation of the solar energy (theoretically premised by himself in March, 1882, and now, in part at least, actu- ally observed by astronomers) and then to see him led to make such reflections as these : " We find that in the great workshop of nature there are no lines of demarkation to be drawn between the most ex- alted speculation and common-place practice ; in the conditions of solar and stellar spaces we recognize principles of high perfection ap- plicable also to humble purposes of human life. All knowledge must lead up to one great result, that of an intelligent recognition of the Creator through his works." Scientific Dogmatists. Certain of the scientists who are not in the front rank of thinkers are addicted to a dogmatism the sight of which should arrest the attention and correct the habits of any theologian who may have a tendency to walk in that way. They have no hesitation in declar- ing that their knowledge of " the laws of nature" renders it impos- sible for them to accept the teachings of Scripture ; and some imperfectly instructed Christians tremble as they listen to them. But the British Church Congress was rendered memorable by the reading of a letter from an eminent man of science, in which he de- clared that the so-called "laws of nature," which are really merely human generalizations from facts observed in God's universe, are by no means so certain as is commonly supposed. Unable to be present to take part in the debate which followed the reading of Professor Stokes's admirable paper on the Harmony of Science and Faith, Dr. Andrew Clarke, her majesty's physician, sent a note which was read by the president. He said : FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. I45 I take advantage of this hurried note to express the hope that in dealing with the relations of science and religion some one will point out what I have not my- self seen pointed out — (i) that there is nothing absolute in the whole objective world ; no absolute standard of mass, quality or duration ; that the knowledge of an absolute primitive weight of atoms is impossible, and that what we call the ordinary weight of a body is not a thing of itself alone, but a product of the body by which it is attracted, the distance between them, and the disturbances occa- sioned by other invisible but active forces ; (2) that the assumption constituting the fundamental axiom of modern physics, that all true explanations of natural phenomena are mechanical, is incompatible with demonstrable facts ; (3) that the progress of chemistry is becoming more and more irreconcilable with the theory of the atomic constitution of matter ; (4) that there is no law of physics, not even the law of gravitation, without great growing exceptions, and no theory of physical phenomena, not even the undulatory theory of light, which is not now becoming more and more inadequate to explain the facts discovered within its area of comprehension ; (5) and that, therefore, the boasted accuracy and per- manency of so-called physical laws and theories is unfounded ; that very probably the greater part of the so-called axioms of modern physics will be swept away as untenable : that theories of natural phenomena, apparently the most comprehen- sive and conclusive, are merely provisional ; at present finality in this region is neither visible, attainable, nor clearly conceivable, and that after all there may be methods of spiritual verification which, within their condition, scope, and use, may compare not unfavorably with the methods so confidently depended upon in physical research. Victoria Institute. The Victoria Institute of Great Britain, whose president in his late Annual Address made such kind allusions to the American In- stitute, its younger sister, continues to do its work with a zeal which attracts attention and an ability which commands respect. During the year a careful analysis was made by Professor Stokes, F.R.S., Sir J. R. Bennett, Vice-President R.S., Professor Beale, F.R.S., and others, of the various theories of evolution, without meeting any scientific evidence to prove or even give countenance to the theory that man had been evolved from a lower order of animals. Even Professor Virchow declares that there is a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man ; and that any positive advance in the province of prehistoric anthropology has actually removed us further from proofs of con- nection with the inferior animal kingdom. In this Professor Bar- rande, the eminent Italian paleontologist, concurs, declaring that in none of his investigations has he found any one fossil species de- veloped into another. In fact, the report goes on to state that it 10 146 CHIPS AND CHUNKS seems that no scientific man has yet discovered a link between man and the ape, between fish and frog, or between the vertebrate and the invertebrate animals ; nor is there any evidence of any one species losing its peculiar characteristics to acquire new ones belong- ing to other species. Among other matters that came before the Institute were the investigations of Hormuzd Rassam in Nineveh and Babylon, and his discovery of Sepharvaim, one of the earliest cities mentioned in Scripture. It was announced that the result of explorations now being carried on in Egypt would be laid before the Institute early in the winter. The discoveries in this .field are represented as being very important, especially that of the site of Succoth, which is absolutely confirmatory of the sacred record. Mr. Rassam is also a member of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, and has communicated a paper on the subject to the American Institute, which will be read at one of its earliest meetings. Professor Stokes, who was on the committee named above, is the successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics in Cambridge University, and is a member of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy. Joseph Cook's Work. It would seem to be in the line of this review to speak of the course of Monday lectures delivered last winter in Boston by Joseph Cook, a valued member of this Institute. Mr. Cook's recent voyage around the world enriched his active mind with fresh materials. Much of that course of lectures was outside our line of work, but was popular and powerful, and always manifestly designed to make for the defense and propagation of" the truth as it in Jesus." There is one passage which I reproduce because of its present interest as a picture of contemporaneous opinion, and because of the value I am sure it will have to future historians of the progress of philosophy. It is this : It is a characteristic of the more cultured circles in England, and especially in Scotland, to ridicule the vagueness, evasiveness, slatternliness, and untenableness of materialistic and agnostic definitions of matter and life. You cannot live in the more cultured circles of Great Britian a month without greatly diminishing your respect for agnosticism and materialism. Yes ; but you FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 14; say, "England is the home of agnosticism." So it is. "The chief defenders of materialism are in Great Britain." So they are ; but I am profoundly convinced, after conversations with the leaders of philosophical thought in university centers and elsewhere in the British Islands, that really advanced thinking in England is fundamentally anti-materialistic, anti-agnostic, and so really anti-Spencerian. You are sitting one day in Edinburgh, with a company of learned men, at table at dinner, and one of them says Herbert Spencer cannot read German. You think that must be a mistake, and turn to Professor Calderwood and say, " Is it true ? That is a strange assertion." " I have always understood it to be the truth." You ask the views of the whole company and find that not a man doubts the assertion. Agnosticism, as represented by Spencer, has a very poor following north of the Tweed. You are in the study of Lionel Beale one day in London, Herbert Spen- cer's home, and he says: "That man's books contain so much false physiology that they will not be read ten years after his death except as literary curiosities." And Lionel Beale is supposed to know something of physiology. You are after- ward in Germany, and you find that Herbert Spencer is regarded as a bright man indeed, but by no means as a leader of philosophical thought. In short, as compared with Herman Lotze, you hear Herbert Spencer called a charlatan. It pains you not a little to find that your own country has large circles that follow him so loyally. It pains you to find that there is a British materialistic school. One day you express this view in company to professors of Edinburgh and Glas- gow, and one of them turns upon you somewhat sternly and says : " There is no British materialistic school. Britain includes Scotland and England. There is no Scotch materialistic school. There is no English materialistic school. If there is any materialistic school in these islands it is a London and a Cockney material- istic school." This is Professor Tait of Edinburgh. You hear the same sentiment expressed by Professor Veitch, of Glasgow, the biographer of Sir William Hamil- ton. But there is an Alexander Bain in Scotland who defines matter, in the agnostic Spencerian way, " a double-faced somewhat, physical on one side, and spiritual on the other." You ask Lionel Beale what he thinks of this definition, and he says: "It is obvious nonsense." You quote that opinion to Professor Veitch or to a dozen others whom I will not have the pedantry to name, and you will find them all repudiating this central key-stone of modern materialistic theories. . . . Give me the recent volume of Professor Bowne, of Boston University, a pupil of Lotze, rather than the work of any pupil of Herbert Spencer, who is not spoken of with profound intellectual respect in the circles of the most advanced thought with which I have acquaintance in the Old World. Do not misunderstand me. This man has immense influence abroad. His scheme of thought is applied to all classes of subjects by a certain arrogant and noisy school of writers. But I am distinguishing between thought advanced enough to be really first class and that which is not more than third, or fourth, or fifth class. The School at Princeton. Another distinguished member of the American Institute of Chris- tian Philosophy, President McCosh, has during the last year made a movement which will be productive of great good at Princeton and probably lead to similar movements in other great colleges. It 148 CHIPS AND CHUNKS is the establishment of an enlarged department of philosophy. The distinguished president in a note as to this department says : I mean to continue my instruction in psychology, the history of philosophy, and discussions in contemporary philosophy, adding, if requested, a short course on aesthetics. Dr. Shields will lecture on the interesting topics connected with the relation of science and religion. Professor Sloane, who was for years secretary to Mr. Bancroft, the historian, and lately an acceptable professor cf Latin in Princeton College, has been appointed Professor of the Philosophy of History and of Political Science, including Government. Professor Osborn, an ex-fellow of this College, and who stood first in the intercollegiate contest in mental science, and lately a successful professor in the State University of Minnesota, has been appointed Professor of Logic, Deductive and Inductive, and will next year also teach ethics. It is intended, if possible, during the coming year to appoint a pro- fessor of moral philosophy, theological and practical, and also a professor of jurisprudence and political economy. These six chairs will constitute a school of philosophy. The professors will give instruction in the under-graduate, but also in the post-graduate courses, discussing the important questions of the day in speculative philosophy, in social and economic Science. Four of these depart- ments, and I believe a fifth, will be in operation the coming year (1883-84), and the sixth as soon as the proper person can be had. In addition, Professor Pat- ton, of the Theological Seminary, will give a short course of lectures on the higher metaphysics, and Professor Scott and Professor Osborn, who have specially studied the subject in London, Cambridge, and Heidelberg, as well as in this Col- lege, will lecture on the relation of the brain and nerves to the mind. We can have no doubt that the instruction given in this depart- ment will fulfill the learned president's hope " of raising and foster- ing an American school of philosophy, as distinguished from the a priori school of Germany, and the materialistic physiological schools of England." It is pleasant to recognize in this faculty four learned gentlemen who are now members of the American Institute of Philosophy, and to know that already large funds have been pledged to the success of the enterprise. It is hoped that these laborious scholars will hereafter enrich the schools and meetings of our Institute with the results of studies which we are all sure will be conducted with Christian humility as well as with scientific carefulness. . . . Last Words. If the President may speak of himself he will only take the oc- casion to express his heartfelt thanks to all who have afforded him help in the responsible labors of his position during the past year by their personal sympathy, by their efforts to lengthen the list of our FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 49 membership, and by financial aid in promoting the circulation of our publications and in beginning a permanent endowment. And he could not close without a solemn utterance of his confirmed faith in the truths revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and in God's personal interest in men's discovery of whatsoever truth there is in the universe. THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. [Delivered before the American Institute, at Key-East, N. J., 17th July, 1884 ; and repeated at Richfield Springs, N. Y., 25th August, 1884.] We close the third year of the history of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy. It is expected that the President shall note the event by some remarks. Grounds of Encouragement. In looking over the whole field, both of the special work of the Institute and of the general condition of intellectual, moral, and religious movement, there does not seem to be, upon the whole, any thing to dampen the ardor of those who love " the truth as it is in Jesus." Modified Tone of Opponents. On the contrary, there seem to be increasing grounds of encour- agement for all earnest Christian thinkers and workers. Those who recollect the tone of the few non-Christian scientists of twenty years ago, and compare it with their modes of utterance of to-day, will perceive a very great change. Then it was dominant, supercilious, overbearing. Whoever did not accept every fresh and crude hypothesis which seemed antagonistic to the claim of the Bible and Christianity was treated as a stubborn fool or a pitiable simpleton. And in some circles the claims of a supernatural religion were scarcely regarded as deserving the slightest attention from a man of sense. That manner has not yet totally disappeared, but it has been greatly modified. As discussions have gone forward it has been ascertained that there were more men of brains, respectable for their scientific attainments and philosophical abilities, among the l5 o CHIPS AND CHUNKS friends than among the foes of supernatural religion. The mere bandying of words has been exchanged for a wrestling-match in which the sneerers at Christian truth have been surprised to find what muscle there was in the men who had neither imitated their braggadocio nor were intimidated by it. Each new-comer has been challenged. Each scientific hypothesis, as propounded, has been carefully examined. The instruments of scientific tests have been as skillfully employed on the one side as on the other. Increase of Literature in Our Department. The excitement of debate has stimulated the activity of produc- tion. The last quarter of a century has produced a scientific litera- ture created by men of profound religious convictions — a scientific and philosophical literature surpassing all that has appeared in all the preceding Christian centuries. Associated efforts like those put forth by the Victoria Institute of Great Britain and the American Institute of Christian Philosophy have brought out papers and lectures exposing the fallacies of the anti-Christians and demon- strating how wholly unhurt was the true faith of simple and child- like men by all the subtle reasonings of those who could see noth- ing in the great volume of nature but arguments against the ex- istence of its author. In that high and healthy literature, every year commanding more and more attention, several things have been shown, (i) Much that had been assumed to be settled on a scientific basis and to be deadly to Christianity has been shown to have no rational basis whatever. (2) Much other has been shown to be manifestly mere conjecture which has not yet made good its claim to be considered knowledge, and the assumption of any force it may have against a supernal religion to be puerile. (3) In whatever has been demonstrated to be real science it has been shown that there is nothing which can reasonably be held to be antagonistic to the religion taught in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. (4) And beyond all that, from the results of scientific research and philosophical examination, there has begun to be gathered a great store of facts and arguments which go to confirm men's faith in revealed truth and to corroborate and illustrate its teaching. So it has come to pass that theoretical FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 15 1 religion has to-day a better footing among thoughtful men than it ever had before. Christian Books. While great progress has been made in the production of scien- tific and philosophical literature for those who have the time, the ability, and the inclination for studies that are exacting, there has been an increase of books distinctly Christian, didactic, and devo- tional. More Bibles, prayer-books, and sermons have been printed and sold, or otherwise distributed, than in any former quarter of a century. The publishers of religious literature find no falling off in the market. In this country there has also been some demand for anti-Christian books, which can readily be understood ; but it does not seem to be growing, and the publishers of that class of litera- ture have been represented as saying that the calls for their publica- tions are largely from Christian scholars who have a natural scholarly desire to see what new thing can be said on the other side. Increase of Christian Effort. There seems also to be no diminution of Christian effort, but rather an increase. There are more churches built than ever be- fore ; there are more men devoting their lives to the propagation of Christian principles and the extension of Christian work ; there are more mission stations in all parts of the world in 1884 than there were in any previous year ; there are more church communicants in Christendom in proportion to population than ever before ; there are more persons in attendance on the public services of religion and more children early taught religious truths than ever before ; and there are very many more thousands of dollars given for the propaga- tion of the Christian faith than ever found such an outlet since the prophet of Galilee was accustomed to say : " It is more blessed to give than to receive." The hold of Christianity upon the minds of our young men of culture is, notwithstanding all the active skepti- cism of the age, stronger than it ever was before. The latest re- port of the college Young Men's Christian Associations in the United States and Canada gives returns from 170 colleges, embrac- ing nearly 35,000 students and containing all the larger colleges, Harvard alone excepted. Fourteen thousand of this number are I 52 CHIPS AND CHUNKS church members, and over 1,500 have professed conversion during the past college year. Attempts have been made by the enemy to disparage the progress of Christianity by striving to create the im- pression that the opposite state of affairs exists. A resort to statistics shows that the several statements made above are in accordance with the facts. Now, surely, if Christian faith and principles were dying out in the world it would be impossible to account for the great, vigorous, living growth of Christian activity.* Outside Christianity. We are apt to think of Christianity only as set forth by some form of ecclesiastical system. Men are coming to see that this is a mistake ; that there are Jews who have never been circumcised and Christians who have never been baptized. In places where and at times when there has been observed a breaking away from theologic dogmas and churchly forms there has also been observed a solemn sense among men of the existence of the supernatural world and the rightful claims of moral obligations. Many thought- ful men think they have come to see that the existence of each ecclesiastical organization is due solely to " the importance imputed to some form of theological statement or church administration." When such men retreat from dedicating their lives to the mere keeping up of church forms they do not thereby become irreligious; they are too religious to pursue any other course. Then the spirit of Christ and of his religion is spreading outside all the Churches and stimulating to much active humane work. There are many who would not acknowledge themselves Christians be- cause they have an idea that this involves certain professions they are not ready to assume, who, nevertheless, are actuated by Chris- * A few items which have fallen under notice while this address was in course of preparation may be worth preserving : During the last decade Protestantism in this country has contributed for missions, home and foreign, $56,136,636. In the decade beginning with 1810, the amount of contributions for these objects was $206,210. Every ten years show a large and steady increase. Last year the women of the United States gave $600,000 toward Christianizing the heathen. Of this large sum Presbyterian women gave nearly $200,000 ; Baptist women, $156,000 ; Northern Methodist women, $108,000, and Southern Methodist women, $26,500. The Methodist Church Extension Board has received $2,500,000 in its twenty years' history, with which it has built 4,500 houses of worship, with 1,000,000 sitiings, that are now worth $8,000,000. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 153 tian motives and are doing Christian work as much and " as faithfully as the average member of a church." " Multitudes who are rarely- seen inside a church are governed to a considerable extent by the ideas of duties which Christ has diffused far beyond the church circle. Multitudes who are strangers to the Christ of formal theology recognize the Christ of the gospels as the great Friend and Brother of man, and his golden rule and law of neighborly benevolence as of divine authority/' (From Unconscious Chris- tianity, by Rev. James M. Whiton, in the The New Englander, May, 1884.) If we look outside of Christian Churches and their attendants at those who have openly expressed their want of faith in a super- natural religion there are signs which are far from discouraging. Infidels Desponding. The men who are laboring to destroy Christianity do not grow happy. There is a certain exhilaration while their bright but in- jurious books bring them copyright, and while crowds of men are found willing, for reasons which bring no credit to their minds or their hearts, to pay a dollar each and contribute also their applause to a preacher of blasphemy; but as life wears on, and as there comes to such men a revelation of the probable effects of their teaching on the future of society, they grow very despondent. M. Renan is reported to have said : " We are living on the per- fume of an empty vase. Our children will have to live on the shadow of a shadow. Their children, I fear, will have to live on something less." It would be almost cruel to ask this brilliant writer who they are that have emptied the vase, and who they are that have spent their strength in taking the substance out of all human life so that noth- ing but the shadows should be left. But should he be spared that keen question unless he frankly repent, and employ the remainder of his life in laboring to neutralize the poison he has so insidiously injected into society and which now infects him and produces a deadly despondency? We have, however, comfort for him and for all his class. Their 154 CHIPS AND CHUNKS grandchildren will live in an age of increasing Christian activity ; in an age when Christianity will be more stripped of ecclesiasticism than now, and the mind of the Spirit in the word of God will be better known, and there shall be an increase of that faith which rounds out reason and complements the barrenness of this life with the fruitfulness of the life to come. They will have something better than perfume and more substantial than shadows. Now let all men pause and consider the pitifulness of this case. A few gifted men have been employing their powers in accumulat- ing an estate for posterity, and a leader of them thus makes state- ment of the assets of the estate : in hand, " the perfume of an empty vase ;" for the next generation, " the shadow of a shadow ;" for the third generation, " something less.'' No wonder M. Renan is despondent. The more his descendants believe as he does the less they will have. A man whose character was much superior to that of M. Renan was the late Professor Clifford, of England. On his dying bed he uttered some inexpressibly mournful thoughts, which are strik- ingly similar to the testimony of M. Renan. Professor Clifford said : It cannot be doubted that the theistic idea is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least by many of us in this generation, who have received it in our childhood, and have parted from it since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead. The laborers on the Christian side have no such gloom. We may die, but the Gospel will live. The more our descendants receive, and believe, and live this Gospel we preach the happier they will be. We grow cheerful as time goes on and as our departure is at hand. Men may live and men may die, but Christianity goes on forever. Dissensions in the Enemy's Camp. Christianity can be no loser from the dissensions in the camp of the enemy. Here is a short chapter of the literature of the first quarter of the current year. In the January number of The Nine- tee?ith Century Mr. Herbert Spencer gave a characteristic article on FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 55 " Religion," in which he traces religion to a primitive belief in ghosts ! He caricatures the Christian religion by the following sentence : " So too must die out the belief that a Power present in innumera- ble worlds throughout infinite space, and who during millions of years of the earth's earliest existence needed no honoring by its in- habitants, should be seized with a craving for praise ; and having created mankind, should be angry with them if they do not per- petually tell him how great he is." In the March number of the same review appeared an article entitled " The Ghost of Religion." It is from the pen of Mr. Frederick Harrison, who is supposed to be the leader of Positivism in England. He praises Mr. Spencer's article as being the final word of Agnosticism, but strongly avers that " the coming religion " of the agnostic evolutionist is just " no religion at all ;" it is merely the ghost of religion. Here are examples of the way in which Positivism buffets Agnosticism : In spite of capital letters and the use of theological terms as old as Isaiah or Athanasius, Mr. Spencer's Energy has no analogy with God. It is eternal, in- finite, and incomprehensible; but still it is not He, but It. It remains always energy, force, nothing anthropomorphic ; just as electricity or any thing else that we might conceive as the ultimate basis of all the physical forces. None of the positive attributes which have ever been predicated of God can be used of this energy. Neither goodness, nor wisdom, nor justice, nor consciousness, nor will, nor life, can be ascribed even by analogy to this force. . . . For my part I prefer Mr. Spencer's old term, the Unknowable ; though I have always thought that it would be more philosophical not to assert of the Unknown that it is Un- knowable. And indeed I would rather not use the capital letter, but stick liter- ally to our evidence, and say frankly " the unknown." Thus viewed, the attempt, so to speak, to put a little unction into the Unknowable, is hardly worth the philosophical inaccuracy it involves." " Agnosticism is no more religion than differentiation or the nebular hypothesis is religion." . . . "A religion which gives us nothing in particular to believe, nothing as an object of awe and grati- tude, which has no special relations to human duty, is not a religion at all. It may be a formula, a generalization, a logical postulate, but it is not a religion. The Unknowable has managed to get itself spelt with a capital U ; but Carlyle taught us to spell the Everlasting No with capitals also. ... To make a religion out of the unknowable is far more extravagant than to make it out of the Equator. We know something of the Equator ; it influences seasons, equatorial peoples, and geographers not a little, and we all hesitate, as was once said, to speak disrespectfully of the Equator. But would it be blasphemy to speak disre- spectfully of the Unknowable ?" . . . " In the hour of pain, danger, or death, can any one think of the Unknowable, hope any thing of the Unknowable, or find any consolation therein ? . . . A mother wrung with agony for the loss of her child, or the wife crushed by the death of her children's father, or the helpless and the oppressed, the poor and the needy, men, women, and children, in sorrow, 156 CHIPS AND CHUNKS doubt and want, longing for something to comfort them and to guide them — something to believe in, to hope for, to love and to worship — they come to our philosophers, and they say : ' Your men of science have routed our priests, and have silenced our old teachers. What religious faith do you give us in its place ?' And the philosopher replies (his full heart bleeding for them), and he says : •Think of the Unknowable !' " Braver, truer, and more pertinent words could scarcely be ex- pected from even the ablest champions of the Christian faith.* Reaction Among Infidels. In addition to all this among many who have been active mis- sionaries of unfaith there is a re-action. Thomas Cooper, while he was under the dominion of that faith-in-nothing which begets doubt of every thing, while contemplating the condition of annihila- tion to which he supposed he was to be reduced, wrote these lines : " Farewell, grand sun ! How my weak heart revolts At that appalling thought — that my last look At thy great light must come ! O, I could brook The dungeon, though eterne ! the priests' own hell, Aye, or a thousand hells, in thought, unshook, Rather than Nothingness ! And yet the knell* I fear, is near that sounds — to Consciousness farewell !" Rev. W. Harrison tells us that " the gracious hand that saved the sinking disciples has been stretched forth to Mr. Cooper, and from the deluge of darkness and mental agony he has been saved by the same redeeming and loving power." The same writer is the authority for the statement that a London journal asserts that " of twenty infidel lecturers and writers who have been prominent in the last thirty years sixteen have abandoned their infidelity and openly professed their faith in Christ and their joy in his salvation." M. Hegard, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Copen- hagen, has until recently been the apostle of atheism in his country. He has, says the Setneur Vaudois, just published a second edition of one of his works, and this is what he says in the introduction : " The experiences of life, its sufferings and griefs, have shaken my * Since the delivery of this address I have read Mr. Herbert Spencer's reply to Mr. Harrison. It is a searching paper, pointing out the absurdities of Positivism as Mr. Harrison has pointed out the absurdities of Agnosticism. Thus rejecters of Christ reject one another. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 157 soul, and have broken the foundation upon which I formerly thought I could build. Full of faith in the sufficiency of science, I thought to have found in it a sure refuge from all the contingencies of life. This illusion is vanished ; when the tempest came which plunged me in sorrow, the moorings, the cable of science, broke like thread. Then I seized upon that help which many before me have laid hold of. I sought and found peace in God, Since then I have not abandoned science, but I have assigned to it another place in my life." Surely in view of all these facts and considerations we may thank God and take courage. Treatment of Opponents. And we are encouraged to do that which it is plainly the duty of educated Christians to do, namely, to cultivate the spirit of mag- nanimity toward those who oppose the truths which seem to us not only precious but permanent. Have the unchristian modern scientists been always treated wisely ? We do not say kindly, or even fairly. They are men of some power. No Christian man can hold them in contempt. They are not insignificant forces in the world of thought. Men that can have attracted so much attention must be luminous. Men that can excite so much mental activity in so many quarters must be forci- cle, however mistaken. They have broached theories, stated propositions, promulgated dogmas which may prove to- have insufficient basis in true science. Their systems may seem to be antagonistic to the systems com- monly received among people called Christians. They may not always have treated Christians with knightly courtesy. In their zeal for the defense of their favorite theories they may have said many imprudent, perhaps many wrong things. Those who are acknowledged as Christian thinkers may regard their systems false, their methods bad, their influence injurious. If so, this state of affairs devolves upon Christian thinkers the important work of diminishing their influence by demonstrating the fallacy of their writings and speeches. No good ever came of reviling. Making faces at one another is the poor revenge of silly children. What- ever can be known to be false can be proved to be false. i 5 8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Moreover, the writings of these gentlemen, if injurious, must be injurious to two classes of people — those who desire to reject the truth, or those who, sincerely desiring to believe the truth, are captivated by the fallacious arguments brilliantly made in favor of error. It is well known that a man can be just as sincere on the wrong side as on the right side of a proposition, which, after all, must be established or destroyed not by the sincerity of advocate or opponent, but by logical processes. These very gentlemen may have been just as sincere in blinding themselves with their philoso- phy, falsely so-called, as a portion of their readers are in being so blinded. This does not save them from the injury which always comes of believing the false to be the true ; but it ought to save them from the allegation of insincerity. They are men who hold good positions in society, not by force of wealth or rank, but of intellect and character. Apart from what is wrong in their writ- ings some of them are said to be estimable men. It really does no good to cast slurs upon them. If at any time they have behaved unfairly in maintaining what we think to be wrong, that certainly can never justify us in behaving unfairly toward them in striving to establish the right. The more we give importance to the personal part of the con- troversy the more we detract from the importance of the argu- mentative portion. It is a difference of opinion. They are possi- bly right — we are quite sure that they are wrong. We are possibly wrong — we are quite sure that we are right. It is a question which, after all, must be settled by argument. If they are right they will be able finally to establish it, though we call them and their theo- ries by all sorts of nicknames. If they are wrong we shall over- throw them, no matter what may be the epithets they apply to us ; but if they are wrong and we are right, all treatment of them and of their writings which is contrary to Christian courtesy will post- pone the day of the triumph of truth. Let us allow them every thing they can fairly claim of genius, learning, laboriousness, and even love of truth. Our attacks upon their sophistry will have more force from this generous treatment of their good qualities. Something might be gained also to what we think the Christian side if when a new theory is advanced we could calmly wait to see FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 159 whether it can put in any good show of probability, and then take the ground that, supposing this new theory established, there would be nothing therein to disturb the peace of simple-hearted Christian people ; that, religion being a lively feeling of the rela- tionship existing between the individual soul and God, it is wholly unaffected by the state of scientific opinion in any age of the world ; that religion is always the same and science is always changing. We may take the same ground in regard to the Bible. That which it presents us of the character and actions of God is such as only he can tell of himself, and is what science never discovered or could discover. It does not seem wise to take for granted that every new scientific theory has necessarily a tendency to upset our faith. It would be just as weak as to sink into spasms of fear lest the ocean is to be dried up because a new fish had been found in the sea. If our religion be true, it is the grandest and most enduring truth. If any new thing is proved scientifically, so far as it can be to have any connection with religion, it will be demonstrated to be shown in harmony therewith. No matter how we came, we came from God. No matter through how many changes the originally created Adam may have been carried before it ripened into us, Christian people can turn to one another and say, " Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Whether it be by the single step of creation, or the double step of creation and redemption, or the three steps of origi- nal creation, intermediate evolution, and final redemption, " Now are we the sons of God." It is at least prudent to concede that these gentlemen may have no intentions adverse to Christianity, unless they distinctly affirm their opposition. They make certain observations which give them certain results. They reason upon these in certain ways which lead them to certain conclusions. A Christian stands by and says : " Why, that cannot be so, because that would be contrary to Christianity." The instant reply is : " We cannot help that. We must speak out what we take to be truth. If the truth be contrary to Christianity, so much the worse for Christianity." Whereas, what the scientist claims to be an established truth may as yet be only a suggested hypothesis : or, if it turn out to be true, the objector's notion of Christianity may be false. A man ought to have enough 160 CHIPS AND CHUNKS confidence in his religion to have patience. The Christian religion is true or false. If false, we ought all to abandon it ; if true, it will outride all errors. By a short-sighted zeal of professed Christians men may be driven into antagonism to Christianity who may have had no original disposition that way. May it not be wiser to adopt the plan of taking all the grist that comes through the mill of science and striving as far as we can to make this meal up into the bread of religion ? This course would certainly leave to Christian philosophers and scientists their whole power for the scientific and philosophic refuta- tion of all the errors propagated on the other side and for the establishment of the truth. Blatant Anti-Christians. But, while we should inculcate and exemplify this spirit toward the better class of the opponents of our faith, all Christians should labor to set before the masses of the people, in conversation and by promoting appropriate lectures, and by the constant reproduc- tion of those lectures in local journals, of the facts which annihilate the boast of the blatant anti-Christians, the men who lead away simple-hearted people, young and old, by appeals to their passions or their prejudices. A Misrepresentation. One of the boasts of these unscrupulous men is that all the scientists of the age are infidels, and that all science is antagonistic to Christianity. A falsehood may be dinned into the ears of people until it will come to be accepted as the truth, and there are young persons in Great Britain and America to-day who are so constantly in the circle of error and away from enlightenment that it would sur- prise them to learn that there is a single man entitled to the name of scientist who is openly or secretly a Christian. Now the truth is that an anti Christian is an exception in the ranks of scientific men ; almost all the eminent scientists of the day being devout believers in the religion of Jesus Christ. Let vague and loose statements be brought to the test of facts. Ask for a list of the men who are accounted scientists by scientists. Take the men so named, and count, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. X 6 T or weigh, or measure them, and see what proportion are professed rejecters of religion- Read this list to the people who are misled and see how it will open their eyes. How, then, did this idea find place ? The explanation is not far to seek. No good man boasts of being a religionist. He does not flaunt his profession in the eyes of his fellow-men. His co-religionists do not ordinarily trumpet his belief. But if a man become known to the community and seem to commit himself against religion he is glorified, and made a hero, and quoted. It is so in every department of society. In mercantile circles the suspension of one firm or the breaking of one bank will create more noise in a week than the regular pros- perous working of a thousand banks and ten thousand merchants will make in a year. There are a million of men in the United States who have never committed felony of any sort and whose names have never appeared in any newspaper. They are the good unknown. Every wretch who has taken a human life has had his name paraded to the eyes of all the readers, old or young, through- out the length and breadth of the land. Reading the daily papers, and taking general and superficial impressions, one might thought- lessly reach the conclusion that the most of the population of the land is engaged in petit or grand larceny, swindling or robbery, burglary or arson, seduction or adultery, homicide or murder in the first degree. But we know that this is not true. Nor is it true that because a few noisy blasphemers are claim- ing the scientists on their side therefore those gentlemen are opposed to religion. Scientists at Prayer. At the session of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science, held at Minneapolis in 1883, according to a custom which has been in favor for years, a prayer-meeting was held on Sun- day afternoon, which was attended by a large number of the members of the Association, many of whom took part in the services. At that meeting the leader remarked that the earliest teaching of litera- ture or science imposed and taught the worship of God as Creator and Preserver. He then read the 19th and 43d Psalms as the lesson of the hour, Principal J. W. Dawson of McGill College, 11 1 62 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Montreal, Canada, followed with remarks. Said he : " Men of science are not antagonistic to true religion ; they are seeking truth. Paul certainly, and also Luke, among the apostles, should be ranked among the scientists of their day. There is no incongruity between the pursuit of truth in science and a devout and god-fearing spirit." Professor Young, of Princeton (who is an honored member of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy), who was President of the Association for the year, followed with similar remarks, declar- ing that this was not an irreligious association, but one that realized its responsibility to the Maker of all, and reverently added : " We need a stronger and more living faith." Dr. Hovey, of Bridgeport, Conn., the originator of the Association's prayer-meeting, said : " We seek the truth ; seek it earnestly, humbly, yet fearlessly, being assured that from these efforts no detriment can come to true re- vealed religion." He then referred to the devout spirit of scientists, and instanced the first message sent by telegraph ; namely, " What hath God wrought ! " and also to the other first one, when the tele- graph encircled the world ; to wit, " Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men ! " It is worth remarking how little that prayer-meeting was noticed by the press. It is a better answer to the ridiculous " prayer-test " proposition of a few years ago than one half the arguments which have been elaborately employed, and yet it was ignored by the newsmongers, while the prayer-test was hailed, and heralded, and kept before the eyes of all the people. The Christian people every- where should see that the facts on our side are reproduced in their local journals until their influence is felt every-where. How to Reach the People. Perhaps my honored fellow-laborers will bear with me and not misunderstand me if I touch another topic. Let me introduce it by a question. Do we, who deliver addresses and lectures on Christian evidence and Christian philosophy, seek with sufficient earnestness to render our arguments intelligible to the common people ? After one of the lectures in one of our courses in the Broadway Taber- nacle, as I walked down the street with a young man of rare abili- ties, who had studied in Germany and in the East, he put this to FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 63 me after the following fashion: ''You gentlemen are very earnest, but I cannot help contrasting you with the greatest and most fa- mous lecturers on physical science. When they come before pop- ular audiences they do not descend to clap-trap, but they employ the choicest yet clearest language to make what they say not only understood by the plainest hearer, but interesting to him. Some of your Institute's lecturers do not seem to see the necessity of that. The lecture to-night was very able. I believe that I understood what the lecturer meant in every sentence, but it was because it was in the line of my studies. I do not think that more than one in twenty of the persons present felt the force of the argument. It was written accurately in the high technicalities of philosophy, but it could have been stated in plain language with no loss of force." Shortly after this American view of the case there was an English presentation of the same idea. The Rev. Henry Footman, in his book entitled Reasonable Apprehensions and Reasonable Hints, seemed much impressed with the faculty possessed by the leaders in the Hall of Science in London for presenting the agnostic philosophy of Spencer and Mill, and the so-called " higher criticism " of Ger- many, in such a form that it is not only intelligible but attractive to the uncultivated mass of the East End. This is worth pondering. Fas ab hoste doceri* The American Institute must at its monthly meetings and in its summer schools and in its publications afford the opportunity for the utterance of the most profound researches in science and philosophy by the ablest thinkers in Christendom. That will be considered by many as its first function. But, beyond that, can we not induce our strongest men, the men whose ability and eminence are universally acknowledged, with their mastery of the subject, to go before the people, the busy people who have no time for high study, and present to them the deepest truth in the plainest words, and make that truth still plainer and more winsome by illustrations captivating to their fancies ? If, for the sake of their scientific hypotheses, the gentlemen of the physical science depart- ment can do this, cannot our great and gifted men, for Christ's sake and the truth's, carry the highest thoughts to the lowliest minds in such ways as shall make the angel's visit welcome to the peasant's hovel? There seems to be a rich field open to some great man, who 164 CHIPS AND CHUNKS is great enough to be as great in a valley as on a mount, who shall be able to speak so that all the masters of all the schools shall be bound by the spell of his power and learning and yet feel that it is not a condescension, but an honor, to give the truth to children and child-like men ; who shall be able at once to lead the music of the choirs invisible and to show shepherds how to find the Redeemer. " The Liberty of Prophesying." But, in this day when such large claims are made for " the liberty of prophesying," it may be well to give heed to some of the condi- tions and limits of this liberty. Studious men have fancies, whims, suggestive ideas perpetually floating through their brains. These will ordinarily relate to the subjects of their studies. Faraday, one of the most practical of sci- entists, although he was never misled by fantasies, found his brain teeming with them. Those notions that seem most consistent with the knowledge already attained, or to have some possibility of being, at least, essential to the circle of settled science, are to be held a moment that the thinker may examine them, in order to ascertain whether it is worth while to examine them still further, with a view to forming an opinion. Perhaps one of each hundred may be found worthy this honor. But opinions are one thing and beliefs another. A fair, earnest, industrious thinker, who is patient withal, and who is too self-loving to be self-deceptive, will be very cautious how many of his opinions he allows to ascend to the plane of belief. He is a very prosperous worker in the mine of thought who finds one in each score of his opinions worth the name of a belief; and he is an opulent teacher who knows, or is entirely sure, that one in each dozen of his beliefs is really and truly a doctrine. There never was a time when teachers of science and religion were more called to keep these distinctions in view than the present. An opinion is not a hypothesis, and a hypothesis is not a theory, and a theory is not a doctrine in any department of science, physical or mental. It requires more than one opinion to make a hypothesis. Before it can become the accepted theory a hypothesis must be worked on so long that no other hypothesis on the subject can be FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 65 accepted ; and a hypothesis may be worked until it produce a theory which is destructive of the parent hypothesis. A theory must come into general acceptance among teachers in the depart- ment to which it belongs before it can be promulgated as a doc- trine. The hypothesis has no other foundation than " suppose." It says, " Suppose A were B, what could C be?" It is always answered by another " suppose." Thus : " Suppose A were not B, what is C then ? " Or, " Suppose A were Z, what then ? " But theory cannot be so easily set aside. It must be shown to be unreasonable or defective in that it does not meet the facts that are known. The hypothesis is the vessel which holds the pearls of the facts ; the theory the string on which they are strung. Doctrine is something higher, more important, and more solemn. It is what a man must teach if he teach at all. In science a man may or may not teach ; it is a matter of choice. But when he does teach he must remember that just as great a proportion of people must take their scientific teaching on authority, without investigation, as must take their religious teaching. So he is bound to tell them when he is enunciating an opinion, when a hypothesis, when a theory, and when a doctrine. The public teacher who expects to win the reputation of trust- worthiness in the department of science must be very careful how he advances sudden suggestions or even well-weighed thoughts as science. He may discuss them esoterically, with other scientific teachers, until satisfied that they are opinions worth uttering to the public or to the classes committed to his charge. Even when so satisfied he must be very careful to call attention to the fact that he is only expressing his opinion, and is not teaching science. He may so speak his opinions as opinions, and he may set forth hypotheses as hypotheses, and theories as theories, but he must be careful not to insist upon these as settled doctrines of the Scientific Catholic Church. Philosophical Cant. Perhaps, also, we cannot warn one another too often of the danger of falling into "cant." In philosophy and in science it is just as easy to acquire the habit of using words which have been emptied of their meaning as it is in religion. 1 66 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Into our modern philosophical discussions has come the word " unthinkable." It is of such frequent use that it might be well to ask those who so often take refuge under it as a shield when they are attacked, and so often hurl it as a javelin against any statement they oppose, what they mean by it. Do they mean " inconceivable ? " But "conceivability " is not held by metaphysicians as a criterion of any truth which can be proved, and there are many things accepted by all classes of thinkers as true which are not conceivable. The expansion of space infinitely is inconceivable. So an interminable series, so the approach of asymptotes. Is there absolute knowledge of any kind that is " thinkable " in the sense of being "conceivable?" How could any proposition be declared unthinkable unless it had been thought somehow? The agreement or disagreement of the terms of a proposition may be declared axiomatic, or demonstrable, or probable, or possible, or impossible, or absurd, but there must first have been thought of the meaning of the terms, and thought of the statement of the agreement or disagreement of the terms ; but nothing can be declared in this sense " unthinkable " until after it has been thought — a process which would prove it not unthinkable. But, in regard to any proposition, suppose that two men state, the one that to him it is thinkable, and the other that to him it is un- thinkable ; which is to decide, or who is to decide? A might say to B that B could " think " it if he would, and the retort of B might be that A was wholly mistaken, and that, assuming his truthfulness, he only thought that he thought it. Can any man go further than to say that he is not capable of " thinking " it? But suppose a million of men, or many millions, should asseverate that a proposition was unthinkable to them, that would not prove it unthinkable absolutely; nor would it be proved, so long as there existed a single intelligent personality who had not been heard from on that subject. Nor would the unanimity of the race now existing establish the unthinkability of any proposition. To Lucretius it would have been (< unthinkable," in the sense in which the word seems to be often used, if in objection to his cor- puscular theory he had been told that there is no " up," and conse- quently no " down," in the material universe. With our cosmical ideas the absence of " up " and " down " is very plain. If he had FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 6/ heard the statement, and had said " that is unthinkable," he could only have meant that it seemed impossible for him to co-ordinate it with his conception of the universe; and so it was. After all, is not that what is really meant by this expression, as it is now generally used ? If that be all, why is it not so stated ? Is it not arrogance to assume that any man knows what can and what cannot be thought? When any man says of any idea that it is unthinkable he virtually asserts that his intellect is the measure of all human capa- bility. Those who are fond of the phrase are probably so per- suaded, but if that be true it unfits them for every office of teacher of either philosophy or ethics. It sounds like the protest of the imbecile or the brag of the bully. Then there is the word " unknowable." It is ordinarily employed with a capital initial, to represent what would stand for God if the writers were compelled to admit that there is such a thing or being as God in the universe. Manifestly this is what they do not wish to do. The connections in which the word occurs show to those who look below the lines the secret desire which is embodied in a masked argument to prove that there is no personal Creator of the universe. The intimation is that we can never know whether there be such a God or not, and therefore, for all practical purposes of science and philosophy, men may as well go on the supposition that there is no God. This sly process finds some acceptance made for itself in the universal consciousness of mankind of inability to com- prehend God. But in this sense every particle of matter is as un- knowable as God. The nature of matter in its essence was just as well known to the first man as to any man, to the untutored bush- man as to any professor of science in any university ; and the fact that our progress in science and philosophy through the ages has brought no man nearer than any other man to a knowledge of the nature of matter, while all men have always known the fact of its exist- ence, and many men have learned much of its many properties, should cause all thinkers to perceive that a denial of the existence of God and of our capabilities to know his attributes because in his essence he is unknowable, and so make one w r ord, which is true of one con- cept and false of two others, stand for all, raises prima facie evidence of philosophical unfairness. . . . l6S CHIPS AND CHUNKS Final Words. It is not necessary, I trust, to urge members of the Institute to make efforts for its advancement. There are so many ways in which each can help the officers, who are doing so much unpaid work for which every member is as much responsible as any officer. Printing, postage, clerk hire, lectures, must be paid for. The officers can go no further than the funds justify. Let each mem- ber this year secure just one other member for the Institute and one subscriber to Christian Thought, and, while there is no dis- couragement at this anniversary, there will be a great exhilaration at the next. Personally allow me to thank my brother officers for their kind forbearance with me and for their generous expressions of confidence during the year which has closed, and to renew my solicitation that they endeavor to procure the services of some gentleman who can bring to the presidency abilities and learning which will give greater aid to the Institute than — I may say without affectation — I feel that mine have done. FOURTH ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. [Delivered before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, at Asbury Park, N J., July 23, 1885.] At the close of the first year of the work of the American Insti- tute of Christian Philosophy it was thought best that the President should deliver an address somewhat in the nature of a general view of our field and the work which had been done therein. This has been followed through the successive years ; but it seems to me that we have reached such a stage of growth that all that is needed in that department for publication may be found in the reports of our secretary and treasurer. I beg to refer to those documents. To adhere to any topic when there is not sufficient matter to justify a discussion is not a course to be pursued before such a body as this Institute. I am about, therefore, to presume upon the kindness of the Institute in allowing me to substitute for such a review of Christian effort the treatment of topics, in our line of thought, to which I have given some consideration during the past year. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. ^9 The Case of Galileo. The opening address which I had the honor to make at our first Summer School, on the 12th of July, 1881, contained these sen- tences: "It was not religion which brought Galileo to his humiliat- ing- retraction, about which we hear so much declamation; it was 1 the Church.' But why should writers of the history of science so frequently conceal the fact that 'the Church' was instigated thereunto, not by religious people, but scientific men — by Gal- ileo's collaborateurs? It was the jealousy of the scientists which made use of the bigotry of the churchmen to degrade a rival in science." The Rev. Mr. Engstrom, Secretary of the Christian Evidence So- ciety, London, wrote me that while he was reading that passage in the address one of the lecturers employed by the Society entered the office, and in talking about his work said that one of the most difficult things he found to meet was the case of Galileo, continually presented by the opponents of Christianity. I was asked by Mr. Engstrom to furnish the proof of the statement made in my ad- dress. This led me to examine the case and to furnish what seems to be the true story of Galileo. Before feeling quite safe in using this stale story to show that the religious spirit is intolerant of truths established by science it might be freshened by a little examination of these three points ; namely, what did really happen to Galileo ; and on whom the responsibility rests ; and, what it all proves. It is not necessary to recite the history of Galileo, the details of which can be found in any good encyclopedia. It is sufficient to recall the facts that he lived in Italy during the last third of the six- teenth century and the first third of the seventeenth, and that he made a number of very important discoveries which tended to form a science of dynamics, and some astronomical discoveries which hastened the general acceptance of the Copernican system. He was a man of extraordinary genius, and would probably have excelled in any department of study. He early ranked with the most skillful professors of music, and that art at one time seemed about to be his calling. But he loved painting, and one of the most distinguished painters of his day confessed that he owed to Galileo's instruction iyo CHIPS AND CHUNKS his success as an artist. He was so eloquent that it was expected he would enrich literature. An incident turned his attention to geom- etry. Then his great genius for mathematics showed itself, and he began those experiments and publications which have given him his lasting fame. Before he was twenty-five years of age he was Mathe- matical Lecturer in the University of Pisa. At twenty-seven )^ears of age he was Professor of Mathematics in the University of Padua, where he continued for eighteen years in the enjoyment of a com- petent salary and leisure for scientific pursuits. From this post he was called to a professorship in Florence at a more liberal salary, and was greatly honored. Cardinal Bellarmino, the most learned and influential member of the Sacred College at Rome, was his warm personal friend; a still warmer friend was Cardinal Maffeo- Barberini, who, from that same College, ascended the pontifical throne in 1623, with the title Urban VIII. This is the pope who is reported to have said (to Cardinal Hohenzollern) that the propaga- tion of the heliocentric theory, which necessarily involved the earth's motion, had not been condemned as heretical, nor could be, but could only be considered as rash. It is to be remembered that Galileo had not only a great grasp of understanding, but great brilliancy of imagination and splendor of speech. He treated the dry details of science with such eloquence that his class at Padua grew until the university was compelled to furnish him a hall which would contain two thousand hearers. His lectures were not at all on theological, but scientific subjects. He used his fiery eloquence in burning sarcasm on his scientific oppo- nents. Hence his troubles. When he was twenty-five years old he began, and for two years continued, the experiments on which modern dynamical science may be said mainly to rest. There was nothing in those teachings that could be fancied to have any theo- logical bearing ; but when scientific opponents saw him from the tower of Pisa giving ocular demonstration of the falsity of the Peri- patetic teachings, and heard him ridiculing the Aristotelians with his biting rhetoric, those gentlemen of the adverse scientific school conceived a hatred for Galileo which followed him through his long career. They could not answer his arguments, but they could infuse discomfort into his life, and they would have killed him early if he FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 1 7 1 had not had the protection of such churchmen as Bellarmino and Urban VIII. His first trouble originated in demonstrating the falsity of the theory that " heavy bodies fall with velocities proportional to their weights." Galileo had a talent for exciting the hatred of those whose scientific opinions he opposed. He not only lacked tact, but even ordinary prudence. To the aid of the Aristotelian foes he raised an auxiliary by the manner in which he condemned a certain machine which had been invented by a son of Cosmo. He thus alienated the favor of the archducal court. His troubles, we see, arose from a sci- entific hypothesis and an opinion of a machine — neither of which could wound religious or even ecclesiastical susceptibilities. What did his enemies succeed in doing? They watched Galileo with sleepless vigilance. They knew that his enthusiastic mainte- nance of any theory he held would give them some hold upon him. Already the Copernican theory, as then understood, seemed, alike to the ignorant and the learned, as being contradicted by some passages in the Holy Scriptures, as then understood. In certain expositions of the relations of physical science to the Holy Script- ures he very unwisely strove to propitiate the ecclesiastics who were indifferent to science, and to confound his scientific opponents who were ecclesiastics by striving to confirm a new scientific theory by passages out of the old Bible. His scientific opponents, always on the alert, seized the pretext. The pulpits thundered. The Inquisi- tion was invoked. When the Dominican, Niccola Lorini, denounced Galileo to the congregation of the Holy Office it seems to have been mainly on the ground that he " spoke with little respect of Aristotle." A systematic persecution was organized and prosecuted. With what result? Galileo had voluntarily appeared before the Sacred College, expecting to convince them of the truth of his teachings. He failed. The proposition that the sun is the center of the system was declared by the consulting theologians to be "absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture." The proposition that the earth moved around the sun was declared to be "open to the same censure in philosophy, and at least erroneous as to faith." * * " The Roman College was a regular tribunal, scientific as well as theological." (M. Mezieres.) 172 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Galileo was admonished not to teach the condemned doctrine. He consented. He returned to his home unhurt and, it is said, in good spirits. He had not abjured. There had been no penalty im- posed. His enemies had circulated reports involving those two cal- umnies which Galileo refuted by producing the written certificate of Cardinal Bellarmino that the statements were untrue. It was five years after this that Galileo visited his friend Maffeo Barberini, who in the interval had reached the papal throne. With the pop'e the astronomer had long and friendly interviews. On his return he continued his studies for years. In 1632 he published a book which was received with highest praise all over Europe on ac- count of the ability of its matter and the elegance of its style. It was in the form of a dialogue, in which there were three interloc- utors — one a teacher of the new astronomical doctrines, one an in- telligent listener, and the third a good-natured but stupid objector. In this last character Galileo made occasion to ridicule his Peripa- tetic opponents. Perhaps if that had been omitted no specially ad- verse notice would have been taken of the book, the publication of which certainly was a violation of Galileo's promise to conform to the edict of the Sacred College made sixteen years before. But he managed so to incense his philosophic and scientific opponents that they lost little time in renewing the attack. The result was that the book was prohibited. The mind of the pope was stirred against Galileo, whose course he regarded as un- grateful to himself, seeing that he had shown him such personal consideration. It was this more than any theological animus that prompted Urban VIII. to cite Galileo to Rome. Urban did not re- ject the heliocentric theory of astronomy, but he had his susceptibili- ties as pope, and he regarded the stirring up of strife by Galileo as a personal offense. Well, finally to Rome Galileo went. There seemed to be no cruel urgency. He was cited in October, 1632, but did not go until February, 1633. He was not thrown into prison. He remained two months in the palace of the Tuscan embassador, who was his warm personal friend, his ardent partisan on the scien- tific side. After that he was detained eighteen days in the palace of the Inquisition. Then he returned to the friendly hospitality of the palace of the Tuscan embassador. The charge was that he had pub- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 73 lished matter contrary to the edict of the Inquisition in 1616. He defended himself by disavowing on oath his belief in the Copernican theory since its condemnation by the Congregation of the Index, and by avowing that his intentions in all his publications were good and such as became a true Catholic. He even offered to write another dialogue to disprove the Copernican theory. On the 21st of June he received his sentence, which was, that, being "violently suspected of heresy," he should be liable to incarceration at the pleasure of the tribunal. Was he incarcerated ? No. Did he recite any abjuration while kneeling, and then spring from his knees and stamp the ground and exclaim "E pur se mnove ! " t No ; that powerful and affecting little story does not seem to have been invented until Galileo had been dead nearly a century and a half. What punishment was assigned him by the judges? That for the space of three years he should daily repeat the seven penitential psalms! Was that awful sentence ever executed ? No. It was never ratified by the pope, whose wounded sensibilities seemed to have been so far alleviated that he gave Galileo a picture and settled a pension on his son. Then the astronomer was transferred to the palace of the Archbishop of Sienna, in whose superb garden he promenaded daily, writing cheer- ful and even jocose letters and notes to his friends. It is not in this way that an old man who had been tortured would jest, says M. Biot, who was convinced that it was not scientific truth but personal ani- mosities which led to Galileo's troubles. This is the outcome of the affair of Galileo. This is all the ene- mies of either the Church of Rome or of Christianity have had for the pages of vituperation which they have concocted against religion. This is all that can be shown historically. All the rest is invention. A calm view of this history shows several things. Reared in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church three hundred years ago, and dying in the faith and communion in which he was brought up — a faith and communion ordinarily supposed to be the least tolerant of free thought and most exacting of submission to authority — Galileo found space to cultivate exact science and to promulgate new scien- tific doctrines. He came when the authority of Aristotle, who was a pagan, and whose philosophy was empirical, had ruled human 174 CHIPS AND CHUNKS thought for more than a thousand years. He came when, in Italy, Rome ruled in all matters, civil, religious, literary, philosophical, and social. There was nothing outside the Church, because every thing was inside. Every sinner as well as every saint was a Catholic. If any controversy rose on any subject both opponents were church- men, whether they were scullions or scholars, cartmen or cardinals. Galileo had the sagacity to see the truth of the new theory and the ability to bring the results of profound and vigorous thought to its support. He found churchmen to help him and churchmen to oppose him. If the Roman Catholic Church of his age must be charged with the fact that some of its theologians opposed the new science it must be credited with the other fact that some of its theologians maintained it. The edict against the works of Coper- nicus (Be Revolutionibus Orbium Ccelestium) and against Galileo (1616) was issued by a college or congregation whose function was merely disciplinary. The Church of Rome is not to be held re- sponsible for that, because, in the first place, it was not confirmed by the reigning pope (Paul V.), and in the next place it was disap- proved by his successor, and finally it was repealed in the following century by the Church under Benedict XIV. The condemnation of Galileo, seventeen years later, was merely a paper signed by seven cardinals and not ratified by the pope, Urban VIII., who was op- posed to the prohibitory decree and seems to have held to the new doctrine. His heat against Galileo arose from pride wounded by ingratitude. It was followed by no personal pains and penalties when appeased by Galileo's deceitful recantation. It must not be forgotten that Galileo received his tuition as a pupil in the schools of the Church, and that he held places of honor and emolument, as professor and otherwise, in universities of the Church, from which he was never ejected. Suppose there were an established Church of America in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, and suppose every body belonged to it, and that among the scholars that belonged to it there arose a difference on any question — say the question of evolution ; and sup- pose some of the evolutionists, being narrow and uncharitable Chris- tians, but good American churchmen, should be in position to make some anti-evolutionist, who also was a good churchman, although not FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 175 strictly moral, feel that he could enjoy life more by verbally agreeing to the doctrine of evolution while he went on with his work of over- throwing the doctrine, being helped therein by other churchmen — in such a case would it not be very unjudicial, to say the least, to lay the narrow and persecuting spirit of the evolutionist at the door of the American Church ? Let us go further and suppose that the authorities of this imagined American Church had always burned any man who advanced a new scientific thought, and burned his wife, his children, his horse, his ox, his ass, and ail that was his— what would that prove ? Simply that this Church had acted in a way contrary to the spirit and teaching of Christ, and that the se- verest judge of such a Church would be the founder of Christianity. But no such thing appears in the case of the Church of Rome and Galileo. His life was only another illustration of the general law of inertia which pervades mind as it does matter, showing that any new motion requires force for its initiation and will meet resistance in its progress. Historically the case in hand was not the case of the Church of Rome versus Galileo, but was the case of the Aristo- telians versus a new scientist, in which the defendant was at some cost to defeat the plaintiff, and in which the plaintiff was finally " thrown out of court." It may break the unity of this address, but it certainly will in- crease its variety, to present another topic. The topic is : The Uses of Scientific Studies to the Preacher. Before materials are selected it is important to have a clear idea of what is to be built. Before discussing the value to the preacher of any particular kind of study it seems proper to make for our- selves a clear idea of what the real functions of a Christian preacher are. Perhaps we shall agree upon this : The office of a preacher is to set before his hearers, in such ways as shall be persuasive of their authoritative truth, the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures, so that those doctrines shall become to his hearers a sure basis of spiritual experience and moral living. In order to do this in a truly manly and efficient way the preacher must have, for himself, a profound conviction of the truth and value of those doctrines. That presup- 176 CHIPS AND CHUNKS poses a knowledge of those doctrines. But knowledge is the per- suasion of the truth of any proposition upon proper evidence. The ordinary Christian may be happy and useful in the belief of many a truth which he cannot teach. He may be a blessed disciple without being a useful apostle. But the preacher is sent forth to " disciple all nations." It is not sufficient that he has the conscious experi- ence of being able to see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus ; but he must be able to turn the eyes of his fellow-men to- ward that glory, so that they may partake of the splendid vision. Science is knowledge systematized. Nothing can be claimed as science which is not known. Any one smallest fact in the universe can be as well known as any number of the most important truths. But science has no field until there exists an amount of knowledge sufficient to be made into a system. The apostles knew the fact of the resurrection of their Lord, but that most important fact could not make a Christian theology. The earliest man acquired in the first week of his existence the knowledge of several of the most im- portant facts in the stellar universe, but it was centuries before the world had any thing that could be called astronomy. The doctrines of the Christian system are imbedded in the New Testament as the doctrines of geology are imbedded in the rocks. Men may till the land and sail the waters sufficiently for the ordinary purposes of life without geological or astronomical knowl- edge in themselves personally ; but no man can teach geology or astronomy without scientific knowledge. The preacher-teacher must have such knowledge of what is actually taught in the Gospel as will enable him to set forth the grounds of his persuasion of the truth to his fellow-men. It is sufficient that they be religious, but he must be both religious and theological ; and theology is a science. Moreover, in order to be efficient and largely useful to his people, the preacher must have a conviction that the doctrines of the Gos- pel which he has learned are superior to all other doctrines as a basis for religious experience and ethical conduct. To secure that he must make some comparison of those doctrines with the doc- trines set forth in other systems. That involves a study of com- parative theology. Just in the measure in which a preacher has FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 77 suspicion that the truth, which he preaches is not the paramount and indispensable truth, in that proportion is his earnestness cooled and his power diminished. His influence over his fellow-men shrinks as his earnestness abates, because the most illiterate can appreciate earnestness where they cannot comprehend knowledge. They take it for granted that when a man undertakes to teach what is neces- sary for eternal salvation he has himself examined the grounds and felt the power of the doctrines he teaches. But if earnestness be lacking they jump to the conclusion that they were mistaken; that the man has not any profound conviction of the paramount value of what he teaches, and that the teaching which is merely perfunctory and professional cannot be of infinite importance. Now, in an age in which every class of society — men, women, and children — are infected with a desire to know more or less of science; at a time when even workmen actually know more of the science which has a real basis in knowledge, and also of the science which is falsely so called, than was known by professional men a hundred years ago — there will creep up into the study and into the heart of the preacher who knows no science but theology the suspicion that there may be in the attainments of other men some knowledge which militates against the doctrines he has been preaching. Such a suspicion will produce a weakness and may make a blight. To prevent this, to keep his mind in the robust healthfullness of an unbroken conviction, the preacher must make excursions in the fields of science which lie outside theology. This is mentioned first as being first in importance; as being much more important than all knowledge. The integrity of the preacher s own innermost , profoundest conviction that what he preaches is unquestionably true is indispensable. He may, with this, be use- ful in turning many to righteousness; without this all learn- ing, wit, and eloquence tell for nothing. They may make the body of preaching, but conviction of truth supplies the soul of preaching. There may be a vitality which is very feeble. That the preach- ing may flame with life the preacher must not only be convinced that there are no truths in any department of knowledge compara- ble with the truths of the Gospel, but also that no other truths are 12 178 CHIPS AND CHUNKS of any avail for the salvation of men. He cannot remain in perfect security that this is the fact if he make no acquisition of the knowl- edge which has been attained by others in the several departments of science and philosophy. In this day it is impossible to escape intimations of intellectual activity if the preacher read at all. These must cause him to feel as if he were continually walking amid ambushes, if he do not know that there are no truths so im- portant as the truths taught in the Gospel, and if he be not pre- pared, on suitable occasions and in proper ways, to show this to his people, into whose minds there will frequently be injected the sug- gestion that this is not the fact. If they discover that the pastor has gone over the ground and examined for himself, and still retains his conviction that there is nothing to shake faith in gospel doc- trines, as a preacher he will be able to throw the whole weight of his personality on the right side ; and that personality will be more weighty by reason of his large knowledge. Studies in what are called the natural sciences are also very useful to a preacher in giving him some knowledge of the correlation of truths. He is liable to become lop-sided, irregular, and fanatical — all ballast and no sails, or all sails and no ballast. There is a power in the proportions of truth. There is much weight imparted to a man when his acquaintances believe that he has a well-balanced mind. Men of that character have done much more for mankind than all the brilliant geniuses who have surprised the world. But that balance of mind is attained by the habit of regarding the truths in the several departments of knowledge not simply in them- selves, but in their relations to one another. This cannot be gained by the preacher unless he make space for some study in the various departments of science. The preacher needs not only balance of mind, but also strength of intellect. His intellectual limbs, so to speak, must not only be proportionate, but also strong. He must engage, every day, not only in physical, but also in intellectual, gymnastics. He does well to have a side-study, something that will develop his mind by a variety of exercises. He must go from the dumb-bells to the parallel bars. Supplemental to the studies necessary for the direct preparation of his sermons he should have some study which, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. jyg while not directly connected with the work of the pulpit, has spe- cial training power, and which also gives results that can be worked into sermons. This last, however, is an after-consideration. As he is not to be a specialist he should vary here. He has at command philology and archaeology and chemistry and geology and astron- omy and biology. Here are six departments of science study in which develops perception, comparison, judgment, ratiocination. He may take a curriculum of six years and be gaining roundness and strength for his pulpit-work. If he be a wise man and have in- tellectual self-control his hearers will probably not discover which year is given to archaeology and which to astronomy; but they will perceive that their pastor is growing in power. He will be mani- festly gaining strength to grasp the word of God more firmly and skill to apply it more effectually. That the work of the preacher be effective it is manifest that it must be timely. The preaching that " turned the world upside- down " in the Roman Empire would have been utterly out of place and out of power in the Middle Ages. Nay, the preaching of the last century would not take hold of this generation. The preaching which is to-.day removing the stone from the sepulcher of dead souls could not have been uttered in the days of the Reformation. It would have been as great an anachronism as the preaching of Tauler and Luther would be in this day, or would have been in the second century. It is to be kept distinctly in mind that the preacher who discharges his church duties properly can never be- come a specialist, and should not aim at being an atithority in any department of natural science. Moreover, he is to be regarded as having lost sight of the proprieties if he delivers scientific and philosophical discourses. The preacher is to " preach the word ; " not philosophy, not science, not poetry, not his own pet theories. He is to labor to make men understand the meaning of " the word." He is to strive to bring it home to the understandings and to the hearts of the very men whom he addresses — not of an imag- inary audience. There is one Gospel for king and peasant, for phi- losopher and school-boy — and but one; yet surely no one would endeavor to convert a company of cultivated men by the method he would employ to bring a congregation of semi-civilized persons l8o CHIPS AND CHUNKS to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. A preacher should strive to know the environment of his hearers — their mode of living, their employment, their pleasures, the extent of their knowledge, the character of thoughts which engage their minds, the reading which attracts their attention (if they read at all), and the character of the teaching which secures their attention when out of the church. In our age money-making and science, even more than politics, seem to interest the people. The wonderful practical ap- plications of science to the production of material wealth have so arrested the attention of the people that they listen to all who pro- fess to talk even about science. That is very natural. It is so in every department. It is the practical application of religion to the lives of men, as seen in daily life, which gives the pulpit of this age any hearers ; and this it is which interests listeners, even in the baldest and stupidest and most erroneous talk about religion. If there were no converted people seen during the week there would be no hearers or worshipers in chapel or cathedral on Sunday. The preacher must know what the world about him is thinking of, in order to know how to bring the Gospel down upon their consciences with convincing power. The fascination of science for the popular mind is very manifest. The two books published within the memory of the present writer, in the department of religious literature, which have made the most sudden, profound, and wide impression have been Chalmers's Astro- nomical Lectures and Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World. The fact is stated. We need not stop to account for it in the face of the openness of the latter book to current criticism and the disappearance of the former from current reading. It must re- mind us, however, how greatly men are interested in science as well as religion. He who in his teaching can make either minister to the other is the most impressive teacher. Devout teachers of science have been able to give their hearers great uplifting by a sudden flash of religious light on the researches in hand. When the late Professor Agassiz opened the scientific course at Penakese Island with the simple but solemn statement that before men entered upon any great undertaking they should seek the aid of Almighty God, and added, " Gentlemen, let us pray," and humbly invoked FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. l8l divine guidance, there fell a hush on the assembly such as probably no young man there had ever known in his church at home when the pastor made the usual invitation to prayer. Once, in a large audience, I was listening to a lecture on the sun, by our revered and beloved associate, Professor Charles A. Young, of Princeton. We were spell-bound as he pushed forward with the rapid but firm tread with which he is accustomed to march through a lecture. He was giving us facts and generalizations therefrom — phenomena and the probable causes of their production. In the preceding lect- ures he had made no "moral reflections," nor any allusion to the First Cause, so far as I now recollect. All at once a question arose as to the cause of the existence of a certain class of facts, when the professor dropped his eyes and voice and said simply that he knew of no reasonable way to account for it except to refer it to the will of the all-wise and all-good Creator. It was just for a moment, and then we were caught up and carried forward. But that moment was thrilling. It seemed to bow every soul before the Throne. So, on the other side, when preachers are inculcating a great religious truth taught by revelation in the Bible, it stirs the souls of their hearers when they let suddenly upon that Bible truth the light of the torch by whose aid men have been accustomed to explore other labyrinths. The preacher is bound to enrich his preaching by all he can bring from every department of knowledge. How can he keep a sound conscience and neglect all those treasures which modern science is heaping around him ? How can he hope to be a good scribe unless he bring out of the treasury the new things as well as the old, to the service of the truth? One of the greatest blessings conferred by modern science is the abundance of most rich and satisfactory illustrations it is constantly affording of Bible truth, as well as the light it is shedding on the stability of the foundations of Bible evidences. Above all things the work of the gospel preacher is to reconcile man to God. The aim of infidel teachers is to keep man unrecon- ciled to God. These latter do their work by making the impression that the results of scientific studies antagonize the Christian faith. Just so long as that thought holds its power over the mind of the ^2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS hearer he is irreconcilable, and cannot be otherwise. When the an- cient call is rung in modern ears, " Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God," men must have the solemn and profound conviction of the truth that the God of Nature is the God of Grace, and the Cre- ator of material systems of the universe is the Redeemer of man- kind. He hath committed unto his ministers "the ministry of reconciliation." They are to make men see that " God is in Christ " personally as he is in the physical universe pervasively, and that he is " in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Whatever will enable Christian preachers to do this for any one soul will surpass all valuation. Gospel preachers will be recreant if they let the enemy steal the guns God has mounted in that nature which is the symbol of omnipotent wisdom and turn them against that cross which is the sign of atoning and transforming grace. Then, for many reasons — for his intellectual recreation, develop- ment and strengthening; for the general enrichment of the soil of his mind ; for winning the respect and confidence of his hearers ; for the keeping of his own conviction robust and the attention of his congregation fixed ; for knowing what his hearers know and being able to teach them more ; for his own preservation from flat- ness, staleness, and unprofitableness ; for the enrichment of his dis- courses, that his parishioners may have gain ; for learning how to turn nineteenth-century eyes up to " consider the heavens" as they may now be considered, and those same eyes down to consider such lilies as grow in the nineteenth century as they never could have grown beneath the eyes of the peasants and priests who attended the Master's ministry; above all, that he may march boldly up to rebels, in the name of the Divine Majesty, and au- thoritatively demand the grounding of the arms of all intellectual rebellion ; that he may meet the responsibilities which the Lord in this age lays upon his embassadors, responsibilities which were not imposed on Paul or Chrysostom or Augustine ; that he may finish his course with joy, and his ministry, which he has received of the Lord Jesus — -the gospel minister of this age is bound to seize and use all the instrumentalities which this age affords for setting forth the truth as it is in nature, as the servant of the truth as it is in Jesus. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 83 To examine all questions of history as they bear on the truths which God has revealed because they cannot be discovered by man ; to aid in all departments of scientific research ; to increase an ap- preciation of all true science in all departments of society; to assist in the culture of a sound philosophy, without which humanity, with all practicable scientific attainments, would be like a child with a lapful of jewels of the value of which he was ignorant, or an idiot who was the possessor of the most complicated and admirable machinery which he did not know how to work — these are among the objects of our Institute. Young as our Institute is, may we not rejoice, without immodesty, in the measure of success we have found ? Shall we not patiently persevere in a work which can at- tract to our side only the most thoughtful or large-hearted people, and must be wrought away from the glare of crowds and apart from the stimulus of applause ? Congratulating the Institute upon what it has done, and returning heart-felt thanks for all the help rendered me personally in the dis- charge of my duties in the presidency, I commend it to the provi- dence of that God to whom nothing is more precious than truth. PAUL AT ATHENS. [Delivered before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, August 22, 1886.] The utterances and the methods of the greatest missionary pro- duced by Christianity must be well worth the study of all Christian thinkers and workers. In his apostolate Paul chose great cities as the centers of operation, and was undoubtedly directed and assisted therein by the Holy Spirit. He was in Jerusalem, in Athens, in Rome — the cities that represented religion and culture and power. Perhaps for the generation existing in the latter part of the nine- teenth century there are few points in the great apostle's history more needful and profitable to study than his visit to Athens, because it presents to us the first contact of Christianity with culture as developed in high art and philosophy. These were the only fields for culture, as science cannot be said to have existed in that day. 1 84 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Paul seems to have had no just idea of Athens before reaching that city ; but his quick eye took in the strategic advantages of the place for Christian movement, and he sent back to Berea for Silas and Timothy, that he might have these valued coadjutors in his apostolic work. In waiting for them he was not idle ; he studied Athens. While thus engaged he employed every opportunity that presented itself to plant the seed of the Gospel. The city was about sixteen centuries old when Paul saw it, and during a few of the centuries immediately preceding his visit it had been magnificently adorned by architecture and sculpture in the interests of the prevailing idolatry. Every-where there were temples. The small were elegant; the large were magnificent. Every-where there were altars to all the gods known to Greek mythology ; and, in the liberality and hospitality which ordinarily accompany spiritual indifference, there were to be found altars inscribed, " To an Un- known God." The gratification of his aesthetic instinct could not blind Paul to the deadly cancer which was eating out the spiritual life of the people under this complexion of external beauty ; nor did he for 'a moment feel that he was a mere curious traveler, or forget for a moment that he was a Christian missionary. On the Sabbath-day he reasoned with the Jews in their synagogue, and on the other days in the " market," the general gathering-place of the people. No man who has zeal for Christ ever lacks a place. He will labor with one man as earnestly as with a thousand ; in a chamber as cheerfully as in a cathedral. He that is faithful in the smallest place will be duly transferred to a larger. The apostle could not be concealed in the one little obscure synagogue of his compatriots and co-religionists, hid away in some corner of the splendid metrop- olis, but was soon drawn into the agora, a place where not only merchants of all kinds met, but statesmen, orators, poets, and philosophers — the fashionable assembly, in which it was requisite for a man to appear often if he desired to be counted as in Athenian " society." Stirred from without by the sight of the prevailing idolatry, and impelled from within by his constant zeal for his Master and the New Faith, Paul every-where set forth Jesus and the Resurrection. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. , 185 However he varied his method of treatment, his fundamental theme was the Risen Jesus. There seemed to be perpetually present to his mind the thought that every human being had an immeasurable personal interest in Him who had been delivered for man's offenses and raised again for his justification. In the market- place, or, as we perhaps should call it, the assembly rooms, he was encountered by men who represented two of the leading schools of philosophy at that time in Athens — schools that were then more than two centuries old. The Stoics represented pantheism, believing that " the all," the universe, is God ; God is the universe. Believing the universe itself was a rational soul ; that it was impossible to separate God from matter ; that the soul was matter, and death was a return of this finer matter into the all-matter — that is, into God ; when they heard of the resurrection of the dead the announcement seemed so palpably absurd, in the presence of what they considered settled and unquestionable philosophical doctrine, that it was regarded as an impossibility. The Epicureans were downright materialists. There was matter, and nothing else. Whatever seems orderly and the product of design is merely the result of a fortuitous concurrence of the uncreated atoms which had eternally existed. This doctrine neces- sarily excluded God, the soul, morality, and responsibility. It involved the dissipation into the elements at death of all that we call matter and spirit — a distinction denied by them except as a dis- tinction of different kinds of matter. Of course that school could have no data of ethics beyond utility; nothing that involved future reward or retribution. To them, also, the resurrection was an absurdity. There was a third , school, not mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, called the Academicians, who, at the time of Paul, taught that there was nothing which could be known of God, if there was a God. The apostle thus met, in his day, the variations of erroneous phi- losophy which confront Christianity in ours. Through eighteen centuries the gifted and laborious errorists have not been able to invent one new error. Toward the close of the nineteenth century 1 86. CHIPS AND CHUNKS they are just what they were in the first — pantheists, materialists, and agnostics. Such we find them in Berlin, London, and New York to-day: such Paul found them in Athens eighteen centuries ago. But Christianity was fresh then, and the people he met had curiosity to know if it were possible to have a new school of thought. They induced Paul to go with them from the crowded agora to the quiet Areopagus, where, lifted above the multitude, secured from interruptions in the lofty place of their Supreme Court, they might ascertain the nature of this new philosophy. The mingling of politeness and irony in their invitation to Paul is just the same in its tones and cadences as that which marks the intercourse of the pantheists, the materialists, and the agnostics of the present day in their intercourse with the Christian thinkers. " We wish to be enabled to know what these strange things mean." The irony was in the implied disparagement of what they had already heard from Paul. " It cannot mean much if we cannot take it all in at a glance ! " is what the errorists of to-day intimate, as the errorists did in Athens. It is " strange " — that is, not at home in the realm of culture — if it be brought by any one who is not a pan- theist, or a materialist, or at least an agnostic. Paul accepted the challenge, took his position, and began his testimony for Jesus. His reply was polite, without any mixture of irony, and is in this an example to all Christian teachers. He spoke amid an inspiring environment. If he looked up, there stood the Acropolis, beauty- crowned, with the noblest products of the highest art piled in richest profusion and most graceful arrangement on the noblest altar in the land ; an offering to the gods worshiped by the populace but de- spised by the philosophers. If he looked down upon the city, there was that wondrous temple of Theseus, and the colossal Minerva, and the temples of the Furies and of Victory. Every-where worship had brought the skill of art to its adornment, and the best fruits of the age grew on the tree of its religion, even when that religion was idolatrous. Paul opened with words of politeness. A preacher' of religion, he recognizes his hearers as religious. He told them that wherever he turned his eyes he perceived, in all their works of art, that the Athenians were a more than commonly God-fearing people, intimat- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 87 ing that he had seen no such exhibitions of religiousness in the other cities of Greece. It was a delicate compliment to their city, of which they were manifestly intensely proud. Thiswise exordium opened the way for the introduction of his own religion. He called their attention to the fact that in their beautiful Athens there was an altar inscribed, " To AN UNKNOWN GOD ;" and he mentions the fact rather in commendation than in disparagement. Such was the spirit of the apostle. His manner, also, is worthy of study. He employed all the admissions of their religion and philosophy, attack- ing nothing that is not radically wrong. Whatever a select circle of philosophers might hold, there was planted ineradicably in the nature of man the belief in the existence of God. Every form of idolatry was proof of that, and the munificence of expenditure in the temples about them proved that the theistic idea was at once powerful and practicable. It wrought itself out in altars of exquisite beauty and sanctuaries of surpassing splendor. What- ever, whoever, wherever God is, the instinct of the human heart is to honor him. Man prays from instinct as from instinct a babe draws its mother's milk or a bee constructs its polygonal cell. If prayer were the result of reasoning Professor Tyndall and others might propose to submit it to some " test " of reason ; but to sub- mit any instinct to such a test is a scientific absurdity. Following that instinct, when fancy and imagination had been exhausted there might still be a God — there might be gods — who should be honored. The feeling after God was gratified by erecting an altar to a god not yet known to the Athenians, or who, if known to their ancestors, was lost to them. Here, on such an altar, stood graven the con- fession of knowledge and of ignorance. It was not " To the Un- known God," for that would be an acknowledgment that there was but one God, and all their other altars were useless. Nor was it inscribed to " God the Unknown." He might be known to others if not to them. The legend on the altar was the pathetic confession of the Athenians that there was a God, and that they did not know him. Here was a pungent appeal to the philosophers about Paul. The people wanted to know God. The Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Academicians had been in Athens for generations. Were the phi- 1 88 CHIPS AND CHUNKS losophers no wiser, no better than the common people ? If so, their philosophies were valueless. If they were wiser and better, why did they not teach the people about God? " They did not know ? " Then this is a confession of ignorance. " What, therefore, ye worship in your ignorance," says Paul, " this set I forth unto you. * This is the stand for Christian teachers to take in this century. Let them say to the pantheists, the materialists, the agnostics of our age: " Gentlemen, teach the people God. If you cannot do that, because of your acknowledged ignorance, be still. We know God, and we will set him forth to the people." If they turn upon the Christian teachers and say, " That is your self-conceit ; we are humble ; we proclaim that, if there be a God, he is unknowable." Is that their humility? It is the arrogant assertion that they com- prehend the whole circle of the possible-to-be-known, and declare that God is not anywhere. It is the very modest assertion that what they do not know cannot be known by any other ; that what the deaf cannot hear is not sound, and what the blind cannot see is not color. To the child learning the third column of the multi- plication table the calculus is unknowable ; but we know that there are those to whom it is not unknowable. The Athenians had not the obstinate self-conceit of modern Herbert-Spencerians. They simply said, " There is a God ; to us he is Unknown." What Paul said in the circle of Athenian philosophers a Christian teacher may say to the pantheists, materialists, agnostics, and the unlettered masses : " What ye worship in your ignorance, this I set forth unto you." Taking the admission of the pantheists and the agnostics, accept- ing the implication of what had been graven on stone altars, assuming what is quite plain, that one cannot be agnostic and atheistic at the same time, because to assert that a being is unknow- able is to imply its existence, since it must be to be unknowable, the apostle confronts the errors of his hearers by proclaiming the truths of the Gospel. This is a most valuable example to all think- ers who are disposed to communicate their thoughts. It is unwise, if not wicked, to attempt to take from a man any faith, however defective and erroneous, until we are prepared to substitute a faith FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. i%g that is sound and true. A missionary must let the lowest African keep his fetich until he can give that savage a God who can be reasonably worshiped. What is the use of cutting off the top- growth of an error if its root be left to sprout? What better way to exclude poisonous growth than preoccupying the ground with seed and roots and shoots of truth ? It seems difficult to see how the apostle could have presented a briefer or more compact refutation of what was wrong in their theories and practices. He cuts at once at the core of their falla- cies. "God." "The God." There are not " gods," and polythe- ism is a falsehood based on a truth. There is a God. Atheism is the vacuum which humanity abhors. The God is a person. He has conscious existence, a designing intellect, a deciding will, and spontaneous activity. He is creator. He made " the all," and therefore he cannot be " the all," since it is inconceivable that any thing should be the creator of itself. The theory of pantheistic Stoics perishes before the conception of a personal creator, and the theory of the materialistic Epicureans perishes before the conception of a personality existing before all matter, and the conception of the production of the material by the immaterial. God is the pro- ducer of each thing, and not the product of any thing or of all things. He was before they were. He can be without them ; they cannot exist one moment without him. With what rapidity the apostle enlarges their horizon ! He does not argue. He asserts, authoritatively, as every Christian teacher must. The assertion of the personality of the One God gives him ground of appeal to their reason and conscience, which are always to be addressed by a Christian teacher. Looking above him the apostle saw the temple-crowned Acropolis. Beautiful for situation, the joy of architecture, how small a thing was that sanctuary as a house for Him who had made all the marble in all the quarries of the earth, and all the wit in all the brains of men, and all the heavens above the earth ! And how small a thing that stone Athena Polias, the goddess, compared with Him who made and who fills the earth and the heavens. He pressed this upon his hearers. Looking below him, how many an altar-place must have caught his eye! Perhaps at the moment priests were seen leading garlanded 1 9 o CHIPS AND CHUNKS victims amid sacrificial ceremonials. What can that mean? Does the God who made all things have a need which can be supplied from human resources? Such is the degrading implication of idol- atry. But it is a belittling falsehood, shooting its poisonous arrows in many directions. The whole system of pagan sacrifices was an attempt to bribe the God that was worshiped. It was founded on a falsehood which reversed the facts of the universe. There is not any thing which God has not made. There is no such thing as natura naturans without God, no " that which makes " outside of God. Such a thought is unmixed heathenism. The Athenian paganism was better than that. " Manufactured sanctuaries," as Paul called them, were built by the hands God had made, and con- structed of the materials which God made. If God were spiritually worshiped therein, well and good ; but it is against all reason to attempt to confine the illimitable God within any walls or to regard as unsacred any part of the universe he has made. This naturally leads Paul to deal a blow at the mechanical theory of the universe. It is not an automatic machine. While " the all" is not God, God is every-where present in " the all," and, having created it, he preserves it by perpetual and immediate immanence. This is the doctrine we must constantly press against the godless scientific hypotheses of the day. On no system of philosophy which does not teach the active presence of God every-where can we supply the gaps of science. What is life? Whence comes it? How is it continued ? These are questions for which science has no answer. And there has never been a scientific theory which accounted for the breaks, the catastrophes, the cataclysms which so often appear in nature. Any form of the modern doctrine of evolu- tion is a tangled web, a field of concealed pitfalls, or a mere scientific dream, a hypothesis utterly unprovable on scientific grounds, if God- be omitted. But, in the philosophy of Paul's Areopagite speech, life is that which God constantly ministers out of himself to some of his creatures, by which he keeps them differentiated, as animals and plants, from all inorganic bodies. This truth glorifies man while it honors God. The old stoical and epicurean systems degraded both God and man, by making both only parts of and dependents upon " the all," or God nothing, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 191 and man no better than mud. God ministers life and he ministers air and all other things necessary for life. Nothing comes of itself. God " is giving " every thing. Correct ideas of God lead to correct ideas of man. The unity of God and the unity of the human race go together. One God, one humanity ; many gods, many human- ities. Polytheism had produced national narrowness and pride. The Athenians believed themselves sprung from the ground, abo- rigines, and despised all other peoples. This prevailed wherever paganism existed. The concept of one personal, creating, preserv- ing God is the concept without which science can have no unifying idea as regards either nature or the race of mankind. Starting with the unity of race, we must reach the oneness of God ; believing in different natural origins, it is not difficult to reach different mythol- ogies ; and polytheism genders and maintains race differences, while monotheism begets and preserves the idea of the unity of humanity. The apostle presses his hearers further. Not only does each individual existence depend upon the constant ministry of life from God, but nationality is perpetuated and national life limited by the volition of the Master of heaven and of earth. How far the Greek nation should extend, what should be the limits of the influence of Greek culture, and what the duration of the national life, were all dependent upon God's direct execution of his own will concerning them, since he has fixed the boundaries of the nations and arranged the system of their duration and succession. Paul teaches his hearers the necessity of depending as a nation upon God, and lays down the fundamental principle of international intercourse, comity, and prosperity, in the acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God over the family of nationalities. The race can never attain to its highest possible condition until " the parliament of man" shall recognize the sovereignty of God and employ its powers in devising measures to have his will done every- where on earth as that will is in heaven. There is thus found a sufficiently high reason for the existence of individuals and of nations and of providential national history — that men might seek God. If there be no God to seek, then the universe is aimless, and science is impossible, because it has no foundation and no unifying idea. But in the very grammati- 1 92 CHIPS AND CHUNKS cal construction of his sentence Paul showed that he believed that the unaided efforts of man would be fruitless in the effort to find what God is if man were not assisted by some revelation. So near — and yet so far is God from each individual. And then the apostle, following the suggestion of his statement, that God " is not far from each one of us," utters the sentence which must be the revealed basis of all stable science and the nexus of all consistent philosophical thought. " In Him we live, and move, and have our being." The pantheists who were present could not seize this as an admis- sion of their theory, since the speaker had in advance guarded against that by asserting that God was the creator of the universe and the ruler of heaven and earth, and must therefore exist independently of all things. On the other hand, the absorption of any part of the universe by God, the Hindu Nirvana theory, has no place. The apostle's statement of his philosophic system maintains the indi- vidual personality of man and the individual personality of God, and states the relation of the two. " Each one of us " is " in God ; " and it is because of that relation that we "live" and "move" and " exist." The scientific canon is that that hypothesis which accounts for the largest number of known phenomena is to be adopted as the working hypothesis. Eighteen hundred years have passed since Paul's address was delivered, and the later years have been dis- tinguished by ever-increasing scientific activity. The result is that if one hundred men be now selected as the most able and trust- worthy teachers of science it is probable that no six of them would agree upon even a definition of life, and possibly no three of them would be willing to stake their reputation upon the assertion that any single theory accounted for the majority of the known phe- nomena — except the theory announced in Paul's Areopagite address. The scientific teacher may affirm that no one knows what life is, beyond this: that it is that which has come from without upon inorganic matter, and therefore must have come from some living thing, since there is no life which has not come from life. Now that this life should not have fallen on all, and should have fallen upon some inert matter and made it vegetable, and upon some FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 193 inert and vegetable existences and made them animal, and upon some animal life and made it spirit, involves (1) choice; (2) volition, and (3) spontaneous activity of the previous life. These give that life the characteristics of personality. The dissipation of energy in all living things involves the necessity of continuous re-supply. Paul's theory accounts for all this. Given an ever-present Person, who has exhaustless stores of life, and you have a unifying scientific idea. Exclude that idea, and you have no rational theory to account for the three things in Paul's three verbs which express existence, motion, life. Now, having very boldly and clearly set forth this much of his gospel philosophy, the apostle wisely again conciliates his hearers by reminding them that this truth had been uttered by certain Greek poets whom he quotes. What the people had taken as a poetical rhapsody, and what the writers even may have regarded as a poetical figure, was the exact utterance of a strict truth : " We are His offspring." He concludes his argument against the worship of images by showing how irrational was the pagan habit of thought in which the religious cult of idol-worship had its root. Men are the offspring of the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, while silver and gold and stone are the inert inorganic creatures produced by God's power. It violates all the sanctities of thought for the former to cherish the notion that " the divine " is like these minerals and metals. The very fact that a man had taken up a piece of marble and deliberated which god he should make, and how that god should be represented, and that even the representation of his ideal would depend upon the amount of his skill, ought to make idolatry repugnant. A comparison of any idol, even of their great Minerva, with any living Greek woman who was an off- spring of God, would show what a bridgeless abyss lay between the most exquisite production of human skill and the breathing, smiling, dancing, thinking, loving, and lovable daughter of God. Then how measureless the difference between the idol and the divine \ In all this discourse there is exhibited the wisdom of the apostle in avoiding personal offense while striving to destroy a powerful and deep-rooted falsehood which was injuring the individual and national 13 i 9 4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS life. He does not say, "You have been altogether in error in this matter ; " but he says, "We ought not so to think." Having shown that God had made revelation in the world's creation and man's conscience he began to complete his discourse by statements of God's revelation in redemption. God had allowed sufficient time to elapse for man's study of the two former. He had shown no special vengeance against an idolatry which had so dishonored him, leaving men merely to the injury which such error could but produce. " But now he commandeth men that they should all every-where change their mind " and have right thoughts of God. A great crisis had come to the world. It was to be judged. It was to be judged in righteousness. It was judged in a man. God had ordained that man. God had appointed that day. The judgment of the world would turn on its faith in him. A man's character would be formed by his faith in him. A man's intellectual and spiritual destiny would be determined by his faith in him. He is the crisis, the judgment, of the world. As such it was necessary that there should be afforded to men a most sure foundation for their faith ; that sufficient basis was laid in that Man's resurrection from the dead. And then the philosophers and the common people united, by indifference and by mockery, in breaking up this grand, lofty, and compact discourse, to which Plato and Socrates would probably have listened with rapt attention. But the earnest apostle had succeeded, as has been well suggested by another, in opening to the eyes of some God's revelation by creation and the history of man ; God's revelation to man's rationality and conscience ; and God's revelation in the law and the Gospel. If he had only been allowed to render full explication of the lines of thought so rapidly, so broadly, and so accurately drawn, and if a faithful report could have been transmitted to us, the world would have a complete sketch of Christian philosophy. What we do possess is, at this day, of more value to mankind than all else that has come down from all the literature of Greece. While Paul spoke the idols crowded the streets and crowned the heights of Athens, and pantheists, materialists, and agnostics held the schools and ruled the tribunals of the city that was the eye of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 195 Greece, as Greece was the eye of the world. To-day those idols and altars are merely curiosities of art ; their worship has been dead forages; and the Porch and the Academjr are things of the past. "The Man" whom God had ordained has been worshiped on the Acropolis, and is this day worshiped in the palace of the king of Greece, and is the only thing in heaven or earth receiving distinctive religious homage in the city of Athens. The system of philosophy in Paul's discourse is to-day maintained and explained and enforced by more brains and moral power, and with more rich- ness of illustration, than ever before since Paul's voice was drowned in the mockery of the men who could sneer at what they could not controvert. And to-day any man's intellectual and moral worth, his height, and breadth, and w T eight among men are all measured by that man's faith in THE Man whom God has ordained to be the world's judgment, " whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." A DEFENSE OF THE SUPERSTITIONS OF SCIENCE. In the first decade of this century a French peasant-girl was at her outdoor work of tending sheep, when an iron chain suddenly fell at the feet of the young shepherdess as if it had been dropped out of the heavens. Apparently it could have come from nowhere else, since, in that open field, there was nothing between her head and the cloudless sky. She doubtless regarded it with superstitious awe. Very many centuries before her time an image was reported to have so dropped down from heaven and became the object of superstitious regard, not simply to unlettered peasants, but to poets, philosophers, and kings. Why might not the great God, who, she had been taught to believe, had made revelations through women, have set some spirit free and, having materialized the chain that bound it, flung it at the feet of this virgin, to be the symbol of the emancipation of intellect and spirit, and the perpetual stimu- lus to human thirst for freedom? Thousands of worshipers might have been drawn to a shrine constructed for this chain, and a serw I9 6 ' CHIPS AND CHUNKS ice instituted such as had made the Hellenic temples of Dodona and Olympia famous. That such a state of affairs did not come to pass is due to the fact that it was soon discovered that a young man, then not much known even in his own country, but now known to the whole world of science, was making experiments in aerostation, and that the chain had fallen from Gay Lussac's balloon as he crossed the country. When the maiden recovered from her astonishment and looked up to see if this strange thing had left trace of its descent in the air, the balloon, which was nearly 20,000 feet above the earth's surface, failed to arrest her sight or had passed out of the field of her vision. Just as she knew the facts, before knowledge of the balloon reached her, what was that peasant-girl to conclude ? The chain had fallen from a great height, as its thud on the ground indicated. There was no tree, no tower, no mountain, near. It came sheer from the sky to the earth, so far as she could at all discover. If the French girl and her neighbors and the whole country had be- lieved that, we now know that it would have been a superstition, because it would have been a belief in that which was not capable of being demonstrated, if true, and not capable of demonstration as false, if false. If the knowledge of the balloon be excluded she could not have demonstrated to herself, and no man could have demonstrated to another, that the chain fell down from the regions beyond our terrestrial atmosphere ; and yet what else was there to believe in the premises? This comparatively recent fact indicates the genesis of many a superstition, ancient and modern. The human race is never with- out superstition. Religion does not destroy it. Science seems to foster it. In all minds, however trained or however uncultivated, it maintains its ineradicable growth. Is not the nineteenth cent- ury after Christ as superstitious — that is, as much given to the be- lief of things which cannot be formally proved or disproved, as was the nineteenth century before Christ ? The external development may vary, while the internal germ remains the same. That which is the exhibition of superstition in a man to his fellow is that man's basis of intellectual growth and practical living, Because a propo- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 1 97 sition cannot be shown to the logical understanding to be true, by processes of ratiocination amounting to a demonstration, is not proof that it is not true. No man can thus prove his own existence to another. Any syllogism he can construct must necessarily as- sume, in at least one of its premises, the very thing to be proved. But still he may believe it, yes, and must believe it. Some exterior logician may remonstrate with him as being superstitious, in be- lieving the unprovable, but the interior, informal logic of his soul grasps the proposition of his existence as expressing a fact always certain to his consciousness. And so it comes to pass that superstition is not confined to the domain of religion. Some ages are marked by emphasis of religious superstition, others by that which is practical, others by that which is scientific. Ours is an age that falls in the last of these categories. The tendency is to cling all the faster to those superstitions which take their shape from science, as we abandon those which take their color from religion. It is a remarkable fact that all the fundamental be- liefs among scientific men, beliefs in which they are unanimous, those dogmas which may be considered to be the embodiment of the catholic doctrine of the Church Scientific, are just as certainly superstitious — that is to say, beliefs in unproved and. unprovable propositions — as ever were the religious superstitions of ancient Greece or Rome, or as now are the religious superstitions of the Brahmans of Central India. In having your attention solicited to these scientific superstitions you are asked to remember that no attack is made upon them. Their soundness is not even questioned. So far from striving to overthrow them the present speaker unites with all well-informed persons in giving his sincere adhesion to these forms of faith. His object is to point out the important fact that they lie outside the realm of reason and inside the domain of imagination or faith, but are nevertheless found to be credible. Let us look, first of all, into the department of logic, the science of sciences ; the creator, preserver, and redeemer of sciences. Its great implement is the syllogism, a thorough knowledge of the powers and uses of which, it is believed, enables any man to detect 193 CHIPS AND CHUNKS any fallacy in any process of reasoning, deductive or inductive, carried forward either formally or informally. It seems impossible to overvalue this knowledge. The process rests on the famous dictum of Aristotle, that whatever can be affirmed or denied of a class can be affirmed or denied of every member thereof. A simple illustration of a syllogism in the first figure of the first mood is this : All men are mortal ; John is a man ; therefore, John is mortal. Another, to take an example from the department of science, is this: All conductors are non-electrics ; liquids are conductors ; therefore, liquids are non-electrics. Forages this has been one of the idols of the study. No Bushman in the wilds of Southern Africa has wor- shiped his fetich more reverently than the schoolmen, through a thousand years, have regarded this process and the great dictum on which this process is based. Its foundation, however, is a superstition. We believe that in all correct deduction there are two premises which are true, from which must be inferred a third, which is also true ; but let us notice that of those two that are true one em- braces the other, so that the Port Royal logicians called the major premise the containing, and the minor the explicative premise. The real difficulty in this case lies in the fact that none but an om- niscient being can be certain that the major or containing premise, if it be a universal affirmative or universal negative, can be true. For instance, if I assert that " all men are mortal " it is a mere as- sumption. I do not know all the men who are living at present. If they are living they are not dead ; if they are not dead they may or may not be mortal. Myriads of human beings, it would seem, had lived upon the globe before I came. I have known only a few, those few whom I found here. Of those who preceded me I have only the testimony in regard to some few that they were actually seen to die and were actually buried ; but there are multitudes who may have been translated, who may have glided off our plane and out of our sphere in some other way than by process of mortality. So, when I affirm that all men are mortal I am simply stating what I do not know, what no other man knows, and what, even if it be true, no finite being can demonstrate to be true. To be sure of any universal proposition one must know the universe. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. I 99 The same remarks are applicable to the scientific illustration. No man knows all conductors of electricity, and therefore he cannot have sensible knowledge that all conductors are non-electrics. If, then, this proposition be true, no man can demonstrate its truth. Thus, in this very process of reasoning we commence with the as- sumption of what cannot be known to be true; if true, to prove what we assume to be true in the very beginning of the process of prov- ing its truth. It is not only faith in an assumption, but it is faith in an assumption which cannot possibly be demonstrated, if true. This escapes us, probably, because we do not ordinarily state our reasoning in a formal way. We say, " John is mortal because he is a man," and assume that all men are mortal — an assumption which may or may not be true, but which is manifestly incapable of proof, if true. And so it is through every department of dialectic science. All the things we consider most clear, most safe, most incontrovertible, are propositions that either in themselves are incapable of proof, if true, or propositions which rest upon other propositions that cannot be proved to be true, even if they are true, and, what is more, can- not be disproved if they are false, as they are outside of reason and apparently can have no residence outside of faith. No religious superstition involves a larger and more gratuitous unproved and unprovable assumption than the primal and indis- pensable dogma of dialectics. That immense assumption I think I most clearly perceive ; and yet I stand up here and solemnly and sincerely say, "Credo! I believe in the Aristotelian dictum, de otnni et nullo" And when I repeat this creed all men who belong to the Catholic Church Scientific are bound, under penalty of excommunication, to respond " Amen." From mind let us now turn to matter. If there be any thing of which we ought to know something it is matter, and the constitu- tion thereof. Matter is open to all our senses. If we cannot ascer- tain what matter is, can we learn any thing absolutely ? Now, what does science teach us in regard to matter ? To ancient thought matter was infinitely divisible. It was ap- parently fairly argued that it is impossible to conceive of particles so small as not to be capable of division. But the modern chem- 200 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ist assumes that, in point of fact, the divisibility of matter has a limit. This is what Liebig says : " The chemist merely maintains the firm and immutable foundations of his science when he admits the existence of physical atoms as an incontrovertible truth." Now, it so happens that what is assumed to be an incontrovertible truth in regard to the constitution of matter is a proposition which, if true, cannot be demonstrated, and which, if untrue, cannot be re- futed by demonstration. No man pretends to have ever seen an atom. Moreover, it presents for our belief as absolutely fundamental to all physical science that which we cannot even conceive. Look at the very name, " atom : " that which cannot be cut or divided — that is, has no parts. To believe the accepted doctrine of the ultimate constitution of matter we accept two propositions that are absolutely irreconcilable. We believe in the existence of some matter so small that it cannot be cut or divided, while we believe that no matter can exist without the very qualities which furnish the basis of conceivable subdivision. In our imaginations we divide and subdivide and re-subdivide, and follow out these imaginings of subdivisions infinitely ; that is to say, we may be engaged in this process for millions of years, doing nothing else, and yet there will remain in the mind the con- cept of a particle of matter, on which the imagination can play with scissors of infinite smallness, still subdividing in scscula sceciilorum. An atom is not only an unknowable, but an unthinkable thing to any mind that is not infinite. You must first believe in a person of boundless intellect before you can form to yourself the idea of a person who can even think " atom" much less know " atom ; " that is to say, a person who can have an intelligent cognition connected with the word " atom " must have a power of perception to follow down abysses of subdivision beyond all that man can ac- complish in this department of thought. But it is held by many to be a superstition to believe in the existence of such a person because that would be to believe in what cannot be proved, if true. A man who should believe in such a personality would be as irra- tional as the man who believes in an infinite God. If it be super- stition to believe in a God of infinite personality then science fosters FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 201 superstition when it comes to us with its first fundamental propo- sition in regard to the ultimate constitution of mere matter, and demands of us belief in that which is as difficult of conception as any infinity and which requires for the existence of the conception of itself a previous belief in a person equal to an infinite God. There is much more superstition in believing the atomic theory than in believing what any deist or any trinitarian or any polytheist believes. In this connection science demands some other things of us ; namely, that we shall believe that all the atoms of the same element possess exactly the same weight, that the atoms of different elements possess different weights, and that the number indicating the weight of the atom of any element is the same in the combin- ing or equivalent number for that element. Well, here again a great demand is made upon our faith. . An atom is infinitely small — that is, has no size whatever ; for if it have size it can be divided. But having no size we must believe it has weight, and all atoms must be of the same size, since they all have no size ; and yet, being of the same size they have different weights, although none of them can have any weight, because they have no size. An atom that has weight is an inconceivable thing. No superstition of Christian, Mohammedan, Jew, pagan or savage, ever demanded of its devotees what we all most steadfastly believe who adopt the modern science of chemistry. That science depends upon this proposition: that any compound substance has exactly the same constituents in the same proportions wherever found. Take two examples: water and common salt. Each molecule of water invariably consists of two atoms of hydro- gen and one atom of oxygen (H 2 0). The weight of an atom of hydrogen (which is the lightest known element) is represented by the figure I, and it is taken as the standard of comparison of the atomic weights of other substances. Compared with an atom of hydrogen an atom of oxygen weighs 16. A molecule of common salt consists of one (i) atom of chlorine 35!- times heavier than an atom of the standard of comparison, hydrogen, and one atom of sodium, which is 23 times heavier than the hydrogen atom. 202 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Upon analysis we get these quantities ; in synthesis we use these quantities. Water, salt, and all other compound substances are put together in obedience to certain fixed laws of proportion, invariable in the same kind of compound, although different in the different substances. Matter has a mathematical constitution, so mathemat- ical that we can form tables expressive in numbers of the constitu- tion of any chemical compound. Oxygen, whose atomic weight is, as we have seen, 16, combines with carbon, whose atomic weight is 12, in two proportions. First, in the proportion of an atom of each, giving rise to the compound carbonic (mon) oxide (C O), whose molecular weight is therefore 16 plus 12, or 28 ; second, in the proportion of 1 atom of carbon to 2 of oxygen, forming the compound carbon di-oxide or carbonic acid (C 2 ) whose molecular weight is 12 plus 16 plus 16, or 44. It will be perceived that the proportion of oxygen in carbonic acid is a multiple by 2 of that in carbonic oxide. Again, the atomic weight of nitrogen is 14 — that is, one atom of nitrogen is 14 times as heavy as an atom of the standard, hydrogen. Up to date we have made ourselves acquainted with five distinct chemical compounds of nitrogen with oxygen, namely: 1. Nitrogen mon-oxide, containing 28 parts by weight of nitrogen to 16 of oxygen. 2. Nitrogen di-oxide, containing 28 parts by weight of nitrogen to 32 of oxygen. 3. Nitrogen tri-oxide, containing 28 parts by weight of nitrogen to 48 of oxygen. 4. Nitrogen tetr-oxide, containing 28 parts by weight of nitrogen to 64 of oxygen. 5. Nitrogen pent-oxide, containing 28 parts by weight of nitrogen to 80 of oxygen. It will be seen that the oxygen contained in these compounds is in the proportion of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, to one and the same quantity of nitrogen — a striking example of what science teaches as the law of chemical combination in multiple proportion ; always a simple multiple and never an intermediate quantity. It is also held that numerical laws of combination apply to com- pounds as well as to elements. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 203 Now what is the demand on this ground which science makes of Us ? It is that we shall believe in some personality who has the intelligence and power to dive far below the soundings of the plum- met of human observation into a region to which the most powerful microscope has no passport, and there shape things so small that they can have no size and yet are capable of uniting with one another according to certain fixed laws of proportion and according to no other, so that it is utterly impossible that men can invent any way of contravening these proportionate combinations. One atom of oxygen must always and every-where unite with two atoms of hydrogen to produce one molecule of water. It is not in the skill or power of man to reverse this proportion and make 1 of hydrogen unite with 2 of oxygen. There is a fatalism, iron, adamantine, unbreakable, through all the physical universe, and I must believe this if I am going to pursue the study of chemistry. I cannot explain it, nay, I cannot conceive it ; but yet I must believe that two things, neither of which in the nature of things can have any weight — because the moment either has weight it ceases to be an atom — that two things, each of which has no weight, come together with one other thing that has no weight, and that these three things that have no weight produce a fourth thing that has weight ; and that these proportions are fatal. We call the Mohammedan superstitious, who, when the stroke of fate comes, quietly says, "Allah il Allah," and submits, because he believes that every thing is weighed and measured and fixed in the scales of his fatalistic God ; not only believing with the Christian in a general and a special Providence, but believing that no man can draw one breath more or less, live one minute more or less, than that which is fatally allotted. There is not in any religion a greater superstition than the belief which science demands in offering the atomic theory to our minds. With open eyes I see that the atomic theory lies wholly outside whatever maybe claimed as rationalism, and wholly within the region of imagination, or faith, or superstition ; and yet I stand up here and solemnly and sincerely say, "Credo ! I do believe in a doctrine which applies definite and unalterable proportions to those things which can have no proportions." And when I repeat this creed every pro- fessor of physical science, even when he suspects that this dogma is 204 CHIPS AND CHUNKS soon to be numbered with the dead scientific beliefs which lie around the cradle of progressive thought like the strangled serpents* around the cradle of the infant Hercules ; and every believer in the current science of the world, on pain otherwise of being excommunicated from the Catholic Church Scientific, is bound to respond "Amen." The phenomena of radiant heat and of light create the genesis of another scientific superstition. " Heat," said Mr. Locke, " is a very brisk agitation of the inscru- table parts of an object which produces in us that sensation from which we denominate the object hot ; so what in our sensation is heat, in the object is nothing but motion." This theory has been maintained and greatly illustrated by researches since the time of Mr. Locke. It is now held that all particles of all matter are always in motion, so that in all matter there is more or less heat. Professor Tyndall has treated magnificently of "heat as a mode of motion." Heat existing anywhere produces motion, and motion produces heat. Two plates of metal, say one of zinc and one of platinum, may be placed in a vessel containing acid. Kept apart in the acid, let them be connected outside by a copper wire. What happens ? What is called an electric current is generated by the chemical action of the acid on the metals. This can be made sufficiently powerful to pro- duce heat that shall travel through the surrounding air or along con- ductors, and be raised to so high a temperature as to be luminous. The motion of particles in the sun generates a heat which comes over the great space of more than 95,000,000 of miles to our atmos- phere, and through our atmosphere to the earth, and to all things that exist on the earth. This heat is the effect of the pulsation of calorific particles, a pulsation which generates a system of waves, which waves impinge on our nerves and give us a sensation the conscious- ness of which we call heat. But what sustains that system of waves? Along what is it propagated ? We think that we know that it is atmospheric air through which the sound-waves are propagated to our auditory nerve. But these heat-waves have come over vast cold * For this figure I acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Huxley, who says, " Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes about that of Hercules." This paragraph was written in the summer of 1878. Perhaps before its publication the atomic theory may be abandoned. So much more fixed are the foundations of science than those of religioD I FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 20$ tracts, the coldness of which is so frigid as to be incapable of ther- mometry measurement, in which atmospheric air can have no exist- ence. What is it that has been undulated? If I hold a long iron rod by one end while the other end is in a furnace in full blast by and by the rod will become so hot — that is, contact with it will so increase my consciousness of the sensation produced by heat that I must drop the rod. From the furnace to my hand how did the heat travel ? Not along the line of the iron atoms, for they have not undulated, and no two of them are ever in contact or can be made to touch each other. Heat makes the atoms withdraw from one another. What, then, undulated ? A something which science calls ether. Again : For many years Newton's theory in regard to light pre- vailed throughout the scientific world. It was believed that luminous bodies emitted particles of exceeding fineness, and that these par- ticles falling upon the back of the eye gave us that which we receive from light. How these particles were driven over such immeasur- able spaces, and how, when they reached the eye, they passed through the ball to the retina was not explained ; but in the face of the well- known fact that the smallest conceivable particle of matter coming from the distance at which light from the sun would enter the eye, and driven with the momentum necessary for the diffusion of light over such measureless spaces, would utterly destroy the eye, still the emission doctrine of light was believed by hundreds and thou- sands of intelligent, scientific men. Nothing more thoroughly absurd, nothing more contrary to the facts in nature and reason in man, has ever been believed by any body of pagan, Jewish, or Christian theolo- gians. It was a mere superstition, the high-priest of which was no less a person than the justly revered Sir Isaac Newton. Nevertheless even scientific men are not going to rest quietly under the burden of the same superstition forever ; if they can do no more, when they become tired of bearing the burden upon one shoulder they will shift it upon the other. The prevailing superstition among us now is what is called the nndulatory theory of light. The phenomena of light are supposed to be the result of waves ; waves gendered by the pulsations of the particles of a luminous body. These waves are supposed to travel 206 CHIPS AND CHUNKS at a right angle with the pulsations, and it is thought that figures are produced upon the retina of the eye by the termination of these waves, as sound is produced upon the auditory nerve in the ear by the termination of waves coming through the atmosphere. A wave is not matter, but is a condition of matter. A little boy at a tub of water puts his cork in the center and fancies it a ship. He then agitates the water at one side and creates waves which travel across the tub. His cork bobs up and down in the same place if it be not attracted toward his hand nor driven to the opposite of the tub. A wave passes through the water and lifts and lowers the particles at the surface of the water, the peculiarity being that the last which is lifted is the first lowered. Now, every wave requires matter, which matter may recede from solidity more or less, but must be elastic. To account for light the hypothesis is adopted that throughout the universe there is a medium which, for want of a better name, we call ether. This medium pervades all the most solid bodies, all liquids, and all gases. It is a boundless ocean of substance on which all other substances float. No two atoms of the most compact min- eral or vegetable substance, hammered gold-leaf or lignum-vitce, are in immediate contact; they never can be made to touch. They can be caused to separate by increase of heat, or to approach by decrease of heat ; but mark: it is not the atom that is heated, it is the ether in which these atoms of matter exist. When we have come down to the ultimate constitution of matter there is a perpetual separa- tion between the atoms ; that which separates is that which holds them together, and that is ether. We get sound by motion of the atmosphere, but the atmosphere itself is an exceedingly coarse thing as compared with the ether. The particles of the air are in the ether. It is not the ether that is disturbed by the sound-producer, it is the atmosphere ; and, no matter how rare that atmosphere may be, its particles are to the ether as a dozen cherries in a goblet of water are to the water. That is to say, when atoms of the material universe are put, so to speak, in the cup of the universe, the ether may be considered as the water that is poured into the gob- let and fills up the interstices between the globules. You make a very thick plate-glass and hold it up to the sun. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 207 Light comes through. We must remember that that light has come through something that is not air, because our atmosphere does not extend much more than fifty miles toward the sun, while the light has come millions of miles through something, or through nothing, before it reached our atmosphere, and has then come through our atmosphere, and then, instead of impinging upon the glass, and finding its path arrested, it has gone through the glass, in which there is no more air than there is in the wide celestial spaces. Now what is this path along which light can travel? It is something capable of being agitated into waves, of size greater or less. We call it ether. It exists in the dark — in the dread dark of the inter- stellar spaces. Light lives in the sun, is buried in the space which intervenes between the sun and the earth, and finds its resurrec- tion in our atmosphere, and its heaven in our eyes. But a continu- ous wave system, from the throbbing, luminous particles in the sun to our eye, is necessitated by this hypothesis, and the substance which sustains this wave system we call ether. This is our sublimest scientific superstition. Mr. Tyndall says that " the most important physical conception that the mind of man has yet achieved " is " the conception of a medium filling space, and fitted mechanically for the transmission of light and heat, as air is fitted for the transmission of sound." (Fragments of Science, Eng. ed., pp. 176, 177.) He also says, "If a single phe- nomenon could be pointed out which the ether is proved incompe- tent to explain, we should have to give it up ; but no such phe- nomenon has ever been pointed out." {Ibid. p. 223.) The brilliant professor may be a little rash in this statement. We shall not give it up for failing to explain some " single phenomenon." We shall hold to it — although if it be true it is utterly impossible of demon- stration — we shall hold to it until some other superstition more powerful to charm our imagination shall drive this from the field. Assume that this ether is matter, however fine. If so, the whole body of ether, like the whole body of the atmosphere, must be composed of atoms which do not come in contact with one another. What fills the interstitial spaces then ? Some still more ethereal ether? If so, that finer ether must be composed of atoms floating in some superfine ether, which superfine ether again is composed 2o3 CHIPS AND CHUNKS of other atoms floating in superfine ether, and so on, ad infin- itum. O, do not be profane and laugh, good friends, and say that our " most important physical conception " is akin to the oriental su- perstition of the world standing on an elephant, and that on a huge tortoise, and so on down, one thing standing upon another thing so far down as to go beyond the boundary of our vision, in depths down which to look makes us so dizzy and sick that we do not longer care whether every thing is nothing or nothing is every thing. But as touching ether this is our sincere creed : We believe that there is a substance that pervades all space. It is of infinite elas- ticity, and is wholly unaffected by gravity. It is absolutely indis- pensable to hold, meanwhile, that gravity affects every single particle of matter; that nothing is matter which is not under the law of gravity. Moreover, the general belief is that every thing is either matter or spirit ; although there are those who believe that no sub- stance exists except matter, and that what seem to be phenomena of mental action are simply products of matter of the finest kind operated upon by some special force in some special manner — thought having the same relation to the brain as bile has to the liver. What, then, do we make of ether ? It is either matter or not matter. Is it matter ? It has been calculated there are 1 1 ,000,000,000 times more of it than of all other matter. It is infinitely elastic. It is wholly unaffected by gravity. It is omnipresent, through all, in all, with all. If ether be matter, then gravity, which operates by a fixed law on all matter with a force which diminishes as the square of the distance increases, gravity finds some matter every- where, matter which in bulk exceeds all other kinds of matter, and yet which is wholly free from its influence. If ether be not matter it is spirit, and we have an infinite omni- present spirit every-where invasive and pervasive. If ether be mat- ter, it is a God's body ; if not matter, it is a God's spirit. There is where we are all landed by science. No religious superstition involves greater contradictions than the doctrine of ether. I see some of them ; and yet I stand up here FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 209 and solemnly and sincerely say, " Credo I I believe in a substantial medium filling all space, even that space which is occupied by other matter, while I believe that impenetrability is one of the es- sential qualities of matter ; and that, being vastly the larger part of all matter, ether lacks the essential qualities of all matter." And when I repeat this creed every man who desires to continue in the membership of the Catholic Church Scientific is bound to respond, " Amen." There is another superstition of science which we so firmly be- lieve that upon the baseless dream of our imagination we not only rest all of our scientific investigations, but also shape our practical lives. It is the superstitious belief in what is called " the uni- formity of nature ; " by which is meant the perpetual succession of physical events hereafter as we have observed them heretofore. Here is a belief in the future — in the future of forever ; a belief that all things in nature will continue so long as history can be made, and that they will continue in the order of recurrence and succession which they have exhibited so long as history has been made. The fact is, this proposition has been received as being an axiom ; but that this is not so is apparent from the fact that the opposite is not self-contradictory, whereas the opposites of axioms are always contradictory. We cannot conceive, for instance, in mathematics, of a whole which is less than any one of its parts, or of a part which is greater than the whole of which it is a part. Such a proposition contradicts the essence of its own terms. But we can think of a total suspension or destruction of gravitation ; we can think that there should be no sunrise on the morrow ; we can think of a total collapse of all the known forces of nature, and John Stuart Mill could think of a world in which the connection between cause and effect may not exist and in which two and two do not make four. Not only is the superstition of a continuance of the order of nature not self-evident, but there is absolutely no reason to be as- signed for it. The succession and recurrence with which we are familiar are due to no cause, or to some single cause, or to many causes. If they are due to no cause and are the mere products of chance, then there is no reason to believe that the same chance may 14 2io CHIPS AND CHUNKS not some day assume the condition of chaos as it now seems to retain the form of cosmos. But if they be due to causes, there is not a particle of evidence that the causes of the existing cosmos may not some day become the causes of the chaos. No matter how often any act or series of acts may have been repeated, we can get from this repetition no absolute assurance that it will not come to a close. It is just as reasonable to suppose that the millions of times in which succession of events has occurred may only have brought that succession nearer to its point of termination as to suppose that these repetitions give us ground to believe that they will be con- tinued. Indeed, the former is the more reasonable supposition, be- cause it is more consistent with what we know, or believe we know, of the past physical history of the universe. Take the case of our own planet. It is believed that at one time it consisted of mere vapor ; that at a second stage it was a hot liquid ; just at present, in its third stage, it is a cooling solid. Now, let us fancy that the planet, earth, when a mere inconceivably in- tensely heated mass of gas, had rational inhabitants. It was a long time in that condition. There might have been generation after generation of inhabitants of that world of gas. Let us fancy them observant, communicative, and remembering creatures, like ourselves. Let us fancy that they had had scientific men among themselves, as we have among us. Those earlier sons of gas might have gone back through a period longer than the historical era of the human race, and have appealed to certain phenomena like our rising and setting of the sun, like our seed-time and harvest, like our summer and winter, and they might have scouted as a superstition the belief that ever the planet would come to be a molten mass. Now we know, looking back, that these philosophers of the age of gas would have been resting their intellects on a superstition — a superstition as thoroughly such as if the inhabitants of the molten mass had be- lieved that all things would go on in the world for ever and ever just as things were going on in that molten mass. In their turn they might have scouted the idea of the planet solidifying to such a de- gree that the swirling waves of molten sea should be piled and fixed in Alpine peaks, and invisible gas condense to liquid water, and the liquid water harden to solid, rocky ice, such as makes the barriers of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 211 our polar regions. They would have argued that this was contrary to experience, and so could never occur ; and to believe that it ever would occur would have appeared to them to be as super- stitious as to believe in miracles. We readily perceive that those philosophers existent in the gaseous or molten planet were themselves subject to a scientific superstition. And yet this superstition is the belief of the science of this day, and is made the basis of the rejection of the Christian religion because of its teachings regarding miracles. Miracles are contrary to our experience, says Mr. Hume, and experience is the foundation of all our reason and conclusions concerning the rela- tion of cause and effect. But we perceive that there is nothing in the logical understanding to give any basis for our reliance upon our experience in regard to what belongs to the future, because we never have had, and cannot possibly ever have, any experience of the future. We freely admit, because we cannot fail to perceive, that our ex- perience and our science are in conflict. The experience of the rational beings now inhabiting the earth is that all things have continued as they were. We superstitiously conclude that all things will continue as they are. We conduct all our astronomical investi- gations and all our experimental tests and all our logical processes on this assumption, whereas our most trustworthy conclusions from these same investigations, tests and processes tear up the very basis on which they are erected. And this is shown in this way: Every year there is such radiation of heat into space as, while it is almost imperceptible in brief spaces of years, must, in process of time, so decrease the velocity of the earth's motion on its axis that the earth's day will become identical with the earth's year. A simi- lar thing actually occurred in the case of our moon, the rotation of which on its axis has become identical, as to time, w r ith its revolu- tion around the earth. What is true of the earth is true of the other planets. Many phenomena reveal the fact of perpetually dissi- pating dissipation, which we are taught must finally cause all the planets to fall into the sun. We also know that long before such a catastrophe could occur this planet may collide with others. We have never yet passed through 212 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the nucleus of a comet. We never may. Yet we may. It is sup- posed that more than once we have passed through the tails of comets. But we do not know of what a comet's nucleus is com- posed. We never may. The chance that we may make collision with any one comet is extremely small ; but who can tell the num- ber of comets? The apprehension from that quarter may be insignificant, but when we learn that very many of the comets have hyperbolic paths over measureless spaces our science teaches us that there must be dark bodies existing in those far-off spaces, bodies large or small, few or many, but probably multitudes. When the coasting mariner perceives a variation in the brightness which shoots over the dark sea from some light-house in which there is a rotating lamp he knows that between his eyes and the luminous flame in the pharos some dark body has intervened. When, sailing this illimitable ocean of space, the astronomic mariner lifts his telescope, he per- ceives stars the brightness of which has such variations that he calls them " periodic stars." What causes that variation ? He can- not tell. Around the far-off sun which we call a star there may be the revolution of some other star which cooled until its luminousness departed and left it dark on its orbit. At its normal rate of move- ment it would require tens of thousands of years for our sun to reach the nearest known star, but as he sweeps toward it, and carries our planet in his train, who can tell against what dark solid mass we may not dash in sudden and irremediable world-wreck? It is as if a ship at sea in darkest midnight, rushing forward under full head of steam, should drive against the logged hulk of an unknown steamer, the fires and lights of which had all become extinguished as in sea-troughs she rolled, rudderless. Science proves that possible. Again : Who knows what mass of hydrogen may lie along the path of our system into which sun and planets and satellites may all rush as that great mass of gas explodes, to involve the entire solar system in one instant in the most utter destruction ? Science proves that possible. Again : Who knows but that the sun itself may some day explode ? And who believes that if such a thing should occur our planet would FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 2I 3 go forward in quiet orderliness and all things should continue as they have been ? If the Great Eastern, laden to her utmost capacity with nitro- glycerine, were sailing the seas in company with smaller crafts, and in a moment that whole mass of destructive material should explode and the vast ship be sent in splinters over the waters, do we believe that the silence of mid-ocean would remain amid that detonation as unbroken as it was before, and that all things on the small accom- panying crafts would continue as they were? Science sets before us as possible that this earth may perish by reason of some terrible solar explosion. Moreover, the smallest craft in the fleet we have imagined may carry in its hold that which, by reason of its confinement or from agencies set at work by the motion of the vessel, may explode and rend the vessel into fragments. Would all things after such an occur- rence continue as they were ? Science proves that the disruption of this planet from internal causes is far from being impossible. But, aside from any thought of a cataclysm which should be universal destruction, there is no assurance that the law of gravita- tion may not be changed or be abolished, nor that the law of reflec- tion may not be modified or abolished ; nor that the law of the cor- relation of forces may not be disturbed or totally abolished. The belief in the order of nature lies wholly outside the realm of ration- alism and entirely within the domain of superstition. I know that the proposition of the order of nature is not an axiom. I know that no one ever has proved it. I believe that no one ever can prove it. I am acquainted with no one who believes that it can ever be demonstrated. No religious superstition involves graver contradictions than the doctrine of the uniform order of nature ; I see some of them, and yet I stand up here and solemnly and sincerely say, " Credo ! I believe in the future continuation of that succession and recurrence of physical events of which men have had experience." And when I repeat this creed not only all the men who belong to the Catholic Church Scientific, but all other men who are capable of comprehend- ing this utterance, will feel bound to respond, " Amen." What, now, is the practical conclusion of the whole matter ? Shall 214 CHIPS AND CHUNKS we abandon our science because its fundamentals cannot be verified ? Shall we abandon logic because the " omne " and the " nullum " involve a universality which cannot be verified? Shall we abandon the atomic theory of the ultimate constitution of matter because the existence of atoms cannot be verified ? Shall we abandon the hypothesis of the existence of an infinitely fine and ethereal medium through which calorific and luminous rays are propagated because the existence of ether cannot be verified? Shall we abandon the dogma of uniformity in nature because the whole future, the nearest as completely as the most conceivable remote, is absolutely excluded from all human experience ? Nay, verily. Why not ? Simply because, whether we can prove them or not, we cannot do without them. Without the reception of the unverifiable in logic we cannot reason. Without the reception of the unverifiable in the material world we can have no physical science with all its rich results in mental culture and material advancement. Without the reception of the belief in the unverifi- able of the future we could have no practical life in the present. Reject all these superstitions, if you insist on calling them so, and you lie down to die as starved in intellect as you will be starved in body. The things verifiable are useful ; the things unverifiable are indispensable. When, then, we turn to another part of our nature, shall we starve out our souls by rejecting the unverifiable in the spiritual world ? A recent writer, Matthew Arnold, tells us in his preface to Literature and Dogma that we are to yield as untenable our belief in the exist- ence of an intelligent First Cause — that is, in God — because the hypothesis of such an existence cannot be verified ! But such a belief is the basis of all systems — and any system — of religion or morality. If for the reason assigned we must give up belief in God, give up belief in the juncture of the divine and human in Jesus for some purposes of atonement, give up the belief in the influences of the Holy Ghost, then we must give up all science, all systematic knowledge and human progress. No, we can give up neither these latter nor those former beliefs, because we cannot do without them. To abandon the former is to change the visible to the invisible ; to abandon the latter is to reduce FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 21$ the invisible to nothing. To him who is brought to such a state of mind time and eternity confront one another like sphinxes, be- tween whose faces of eternal reticence the forlorn unbeliever stands — a being capable of making both utter the noblest and divinest unverifiable truths, while in their silence he is born a puzzle and dies a riddle ! The fact is that man has in himself the double capacity of believ- ing on proof and of believing above proof. Faith and reason climb the ladder hand in hand until the topmost stand-point of the visible is reached, and there reason pauses, but faith goes on ; goes on and goes up ; not treading vacuity, but planting its footsteps on the rungs of a ladder invisible indeed, but just as existent and as strong as any thing which appears to sight. Reason cries out to faith, " Come down ;»you are in the region of superstition." It is true; there is something which stands above our reason ; there is something the existence of which can no more be made manifest to reason than the non-luminous rays of heat or the actinic solar ray can be made perceptible to the optic nerve. In England John Henry Newman and John Tyndall, in America John William Draper and John McCloskey, have all flourished. Two of these Johns were religious and two scientific ; but these four Johns were, all and singular, as superstitious as that greater John on whose blessed eyes broke the splendor of the apocalyptic vision on Patmos. And all these men believe — what you and I must believe — that there is something unverifiable which is not incredible. Man's faith seizes that which is above ; his reason touches that which is below. And, call it superstition or what you please, it is because man has faith that man has reason. The more tenaciously a man clings with the hands of his faith to the unseen things, which are unproved and unprovable, the more securely does he plant his feet on the things which are seen and are capable of verification. 2l6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS THE CRY OF CONFLICT. [When my late parishioner, the first Cornelius Vanderbilt, saw proper to set apart a portion of his great wealth for the establishment of a university it was mainly through the influence of his noble, beautiful, and now sainted wife that he determined to place it in Nashville, Tenn. One motive which was in her heart, and which undoubtedly had great influence with him, was the belief that such a benefaction of a Northern man to the South would assist in the restoration of good feeling. At his earnest desire I delivered the first address in its chapel, 1875. It is reprinted here from the pamphlet which contains the official report of the "dedication" and "inauguration." Governor Porter was in the chair. It was afterward delivered before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy.] Your Excellency, Mr. President of the Board of Trust, Mr. Chan- cellor, Gentlemen of the Faculties, Ladies and Gentlemen, God, the Father of lights and of spirits, knows how profoundly I feel the responsibility of making the opening address of the Vanderbilt University — an institution dear to me for many reasons ; an insti- tution which I hope will endure forever. Trusting in the God of nature and of grace, and resting on your friendly interpretation of all I shall say, I go forward. [Looking up, as in prayer, the speaker said :] " Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer." It has been thought fit that a minister of religion should make the first utterances at the opening of a school which professes to intend to teach what is known, and to stimulate research in every department of intellectual investigation. If, for a moment, any man could suppose that it would be proper to assign the initial speech to a teacher of religion as indicating that religion should take haughty and undue precedence of science, the thought would be most infelicitous. The present speaker would not assume any such position. It would misrepresent his convictions of the truth and his sense of the proprieties of the occasion. This recent cry of the " Conflict of Religion and Science " is fal- lacious, and mischievous to the interests of both science and religion, and would be most mournful if we did not believe that, in the very nature of things, it must be ephemeral. Its genesis is to be traced to the weak foolishness of some professors of religion and to the weak wickedness of some professors of science. No man of powerful FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 217 and healthy mind, who is devout, ever has the slightest apprehen- sion that any advancement of science can shake the foundations of that faith which is necessary to salvation. No man of powerful and healthy mind, engaged in observing, recording, and classifying facts, and in searching among them for those identities and differences which point to principles and indicate laws, ever feels that he suffers any embarrassment or limitation in his studies by the most reverent love he can have for God as his Father, or the most tender sympa- thy he can have for man as his brother, or that hatred for sin which produces penitence, or that constant leaning of his heart on God which produces spiritual-mindedness, or that hope of a state of im- mortal holiness which has been the ideal of humanity in all ages. All this dust about " the conflict " has been flung up by men of insufficient faith, who doubted the basis of their faith ; or by men of insufficient science, who have mistaken theology or the Church for religion ; or by unreasonable and wicked men, who have sought to pervert the teachings of science so as to silence the voice of conscience in themselves, or put God out of their thoughts, so that a sense of his eternal recognition of the eternal difference between right and wrong might not overawe their spirits in the in- dulgence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It may be profitable to discriminate these ; and if badges and flags have become mixed in this fray it may be well to re-adjust our ensigns, so that foes shall strike at only foes. It is, first of all, necessary to settle distinctly what science is, as well as what it is not, and, also, what religion is, as well as what it is not. We can all afford to agree upon the definition rendered by the only man who has been found in twenty-two centuries to add any thing important to the imperial science of logic. Sir William Ham- ilton defines science as " a complement of cognitions, having in point of form the character of logical perfection, and in point of mat- ter the character of real truth." Under the focal heat of a defi- nition like this much that claims to be science will be consumed. It is the fashion to intimate, if not to assert, that it is much more easy to become scientific than to become religious ; that in one case a man is dealing with the real, in the other with the ideal ; in 2i8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the one case with the comprehensible, in the other with the incom- prehensible ; in the one case with that which is certain and exact, and in the other case with that which at best is only probable and indefinite. There can be no doubt, among thoughtful men, of the great value of both science and religion. A thinker who is worth listen- ing to is always misunderstood if it be supposed that he means to disparage either. An attempt to determine the limits of religion is no disparagement thereof, because all the most religious men who are accustomed to think are engaged in striving to settle those limits, in order that they may have advantage of the whole territory of religion on the one hand, and on the other may not take that as belonging to religion which belongs to something else. Now, if Sir William Hamilton's definition is to be taken, we shall perceive that he represents science in its quality, in its quantity, and in its form. Cognition of something is necessary for science. Then (i) the knowledge of things known must be true ; (2) that knowledge must be full, and (3) it must be accurate ; it must be in such form as to be most readily and successfully used by the logical understanding for purposes of thought. This sets aside very much that has been called science, and, as it seems, perhaps nearly all that which has been the material used by those who have raised the most smoke over this " conflict " question. " Guesses at truth "are valuable only as the pecking at a plastered wall, to find where a wooden beam runs, is useful ; but a guess is not knowledge. A working hypothesis would not be to be despised, although the student of science might feel quite sure in advance that when he had learned the truth in this department he would throw the hypothesis away. A working hypothesis, like a scaffold, is useful ; but a scaffold is not a wall. Art is not science. Art deals with the appearances, science with the realities of things. Art deals with the external, science with the internal, of a thing ; art with the phenomenon, science with the noumenon. It must be the "real truth " which we know, and know truly. Weak men on both sides have done much harm — the weak relig- ionists by assuming, a,nd the weak scientists by claiming, for guesses FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 219 and hypotheses the high character and full value of real truth. The guesses of both have collided in the air and a real battle seemed impending, but it was only " guesses " which exploded ; bubbles, not bombs ; and it is never to be forgotten that a professor of re- ligion has just as much right to guess as a professor of science, and the latter no more right than the former. No man can abandon a real truth without degradation to his in- tellectual and moral nature ; but Galileo, Kepler, and Newton in their studies from time to time employed and discarded theory after theory until they reached that which was capable of demon- stration. It was only that which took its place as science. In the case of Kepler it is known what great labor he spent in attempting to represent the orbit of Mars by combinations of uniform circular motion. His working hypothesis was the old doctrine of epicyclic curves. But his great labor was not fruitless, as has been carelessly asserted. The theory was false, and therefore not a part of real science ; but, working on it, he discovered that the orbit of Mars is an ellipse, and this led him to the first of his three great laws of planetary motion and enabled him almost immediately to discover the second. Here was a great intellect employing as a working hypothesis a theory which has always been false, and now is de- monstrably false. It was not science. Now if, while scientific men are employing working hypotheses merely as such, men representing religion fly at them as if they were holding those hypotheses as science, or if men representing science do set forth these hypotheses as if they were real knowledge and truth and proceed to defend them as such, then much harm is done in all directions. In the first instance, the religious man shows an impatience which is irreligious. " He that believeth shall not make haste." It is unfair to criticise any man while he is doing. Let him do what he will do ; then criticise the deed. The artist has laid one pigment on his palette, and he is criticised before it is known what others he intends to mix with it, to procure what shade, to produce what effect. Wait until all the paint is on the canvas and the artist has washed his brushes and drawn the curtain from his picture ; then criticise the picture. 220 CHIPS AND CHUNKS This impatient and weak criticism on the part of religious men is injurious to scientific progress, as well as to the progress of religion. For the latter, it makes the reputation of unfairness ; for the former, it does one of two bad things : it obstructs free discussion among students of science or pushes them into a foolish defiance of relig- ion. Men must co-work with those of their own sphere of intel- lectual labors. They must publish guesses, conjectures, hypotheses, theories. Whatever comes into any mind must be examined by many minds. It may be true, it may be false ; there must be no prejudgment. Now if, because our scientific men are discussing a new view, our religious men fly among them and disturb them by crying " heresy," " infidelity," " atheism," those .students must take time to repel the charges, and thus their work be hurt. If let alone they may soon abandon their false theory. Certainly, if a proposition in science be false, the students of science are the men likeliest to detect the falsehood, however unlikely they may be to discover the truth that is in religion. Nothing more quickly de- stroys an error than to attempt to establish it scientifically. The premature cries of the religious against the scientific have also the effect of keeping a scientific error longer alive. Through sheer obstinacy the assailed will often hold a bad position, which, if not attacked, had been long ago abandoned. And we must have noticed that nature seems quite as able to make scientific men ob- stinate as grace to do this same work for the saints. No man should be charged with being an atheist who does not, in distinct terms, announce himself to be such ; and in that case the world will believe him to be too pitiful a person to be worth assailing with hard words. But as you may drive a man away from you by representing him as your enemy, so a scientific man may be driven from the Christian faith if convinced that the Chris- tian faith stands in the way of free investigation and free discussion ; or, he may hold on to the faith because he has brains enough to see that one may be most highly scientific and most humbly devout at the same time ; but by persecution he may be compelled to with- draw from open communion with " those who profess and call them- selves Christians." Then both parties lose — what neither can well afford to lose — the respect and help which each could give the other. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 221 When the son of a religious teacher turns to the work of a man whom he has heard that father denounce, and finds in any one page of those books more high religious thought than in a hundred of his father's commonplace discourses, a sad state of feeling is pro- duced, and many mistakes are likely to follow. Sir William Hamilton's definition of science has for genus " a complement of cognitions," and for differentia " logical perfection of form," and " real truth of matter." The definition is a demand for a certain fullness. We can only conjecture, in the case of any particular science, how much knowledge such a man as Sir William Hamilton would regard as a " complement." But students of science do well to remind themselves that it is impossible to exceed, and very difficult to succeed, and the easiest thing imaginable to fall short. In other words, that we have never been able to collect more material of knowledge than the plan of any temple of science could work in, and really demanded for the completion of the structure ; and that very few temples of science have been finished, even in the outline, while all the plain of thought is covered with ruins of buildings begun by thinkers, but unfinished for want of more knowledge. Even where there has been gathered a sufficient amount of knowledge to be wrought by the logical understanding into the form of a science, so that such a mind as Hamilton's would admit it as a science — that is, a sufficient complement of cognitions of truths put in logical form — another age of labor, in other depart- ments, would so shrink this science that, in order to hold its rank, it would have to work in the matter of more knowledge, and, to preserve its symmetry, be compelled to readjust its architectural outlines. In other words, what is science to one age may not be science to its successor, because that successor may perceive that, although its matter had the character of real truth, and its form the character of logical perfection, as far as it went, nevertheless there were not enough cognitions ; not enough, just because in the later age it was possible to obtain additional cognitions which could not have been obtained earlier. And, in point of fact, has not this been the history of each of the acknowledged sciences ? And can any significance be assigned to Sir William Hamilton's definition without taking the word " com- 222 CHIPS AND CHUNKS plement " to mean all the cognitions possible at the time f Now, un- less at one time men have more cognitions of any subject than at another time, one of two things must be true: either (i) no new phenomena will appear in that department, or (2) no abler observer will arise. But the history of the human mind in the past renders both suppositions highly improbable. If new phenomena appear we shall have observers abler than have existed, because, although it were granted that no fresh accessions of intellectual power came to the race, each new generation of observers would have increased ability, because each would have the aid of the instruments and methods of all predecessors. When we go back to consider the immense labor performed by Kepler, in his investigations which led to his brilliant discoveries, we feel that if his nerves had given way, under his labors and domestic troubles and financial cares, or his industry had been just a little less tenacious, he would have failed in the prodigious calculations which led him to his brilliant discoveries and gave science such a great propulsion. Just five years after the publication of Kepler's New Astronomy the Laird of Merchistoun published, in Scotland, his Mirifici Logarithmorum Can- onis Descriptio. If Kepler had only had Napier's logarithms ! But succeeding students have enjoyed this wonderful instrumental aid, and done great mental work with less draught on their vital energies. The very facts, then, which make us proud of modern science should make scientific men very humble. It will be noticed that the most arrogant cultivators of science are those who are most ready to assail such religious men as are rigid, and hold that noth- ing can be added to or taken away from theology ; and such scien- tific men make this assault on the assumption that physical sciences are fixed, certain, and exact. How ridiculous they make them- selves a review of the history of any science for the last fifty years would show. Is there any department of physical science in which a text-book used a quarter of a century ago would now be put into the hands of any student? The fact is that any man who is careful of his reputation has some trepidation in issuing 2 volume on science, lest the day his publishers announce his book the morning papers announce, also, a discovery which knocks the bottom out of all his arguments. This shows the great intellectual activity of the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 223 age — a matter to rejoice in — but it should also promote humility and repress egotism in all well-ordered minds. There is, probably, no one thing known in all its properties and accidents, in all its relations to all abstract truths and concrete existence. No one thing is exactly and thoroughly known by any man or by all men. Mr. Herbert Spencer well says: " Much of what we call science is not exact, and some of it, as physiology, can never become exact." {Recent Discussions, p. 158.) He might have made the remark with greater width and no less truth, since every day accumulates proof that that department of our knowledge which we call the exact sciences holds a small, and diminishing, proportion to the whole domain of science. There is one important truth which seems often ignored, and which should frequently be brought to our attention ; namely, that the propositions which embody our science are statements, not of absolute truths, but of probabilities. Probabilities differ. There is that which is merely probable, and that which is more probable, and that which is still more probable, and that which is so probable that our faculties cannot distinguish between this probability and absolute certainty ; and so we act on it as if it were certain. But it is still only a " probability," and not a " certainty." It seems as though it would forever be impossible for us to determine how near a probability can approach a certainty without becoming identical with that certainty. Is not all life a discipline of determining probabilities ? It would seem that God intends that generally the certainties shall be known only to himself. He has probably shown us a very few certainties, more for the purpose of furnishing the idea than for any practical purpose, as absolute certainty is necessary for him, while probabili- ties are sufficient for us. All science is purely a classification of probabilities. We do not know that the same result will follow the same act in its several repetitions, but believe that it will ; and we believe it so firmly that if a professor had performed a successful experiment before a class in chemistry he would not hesitate to repeat the ex- periment after a lapse of a quarter of a century. Scientific men are not infidels. Of no men may it be more truly said that they " walk 224 CHIPS AND CHUNKS by faith." They do not creep ; they march. Their tread is on made ground ; on probabilities; but they believe they shall be sup- ported, and according to their faith so is it done unto them. And no men better know than truly scientific men that this probability can never become certainty. In the wildest dreams of fanaticism — and there are fanatics in the laboratory, as there are in the sanctuary of God and in the temple of mammon — it has never been believed that there shall come a man who shall know all things that are, all things that have been, all things that shall be, and all things that can be, in their properties, their attributes and their relations. Until such a man shall arise science must always be concerned with the cognition of that which is the real truth as to probabilities, or with probable cognitions of that which is not only real truth, but absolute truth. A scientific writer, then, when he states that any proposition has been " proved," or any thing " shown," means that it has been proved probable to some minds, or shown to some — perhaps to all — intelligent persons as probable. If he have sense and modesty he can mean no more, although he does not cumber his pages or his speech with the constant repetition of that which is to be presumed ; even as a Christian in making his appointments does not always say, Deo volente, because it is under- stood that a Christian is a man always seeking to do what he thinks to be the will of God, in submission to the providence of God. A scientific man ridicules the idea of any religious man claiming to be " orthodox." It must be admitted to be ridiculous, just as ridiculous as the claim of a scientific man to absolute certainty and unchangeableness for science. The more truly religious a man is the more humble he is ; the more he sees the deep things of God the more he sees the shallow things of himself. He claims nothing positively. He certainly does not make that most arrogant of all claims, the claim to the prerogative of infinite intelligence. There can exist only one Being in the universe who is positively and ab- solutely orthodox, and that is God. In religion, as in science, we walk by faith — that is, we believe in the probabilities sufficiently to act upon them. So far from any conflict being between science and religion their bases are the same, their modes are similar, and their ends are FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 2 2$ identical ; namely, what all life seems to be — that is, a discipline of faith. It is not proper to despise knowledge however gained : whether from the exercise of the logical understanding, or from conscious- ness, or from faith ; and these are the three sources of our knowl- edge. That which has been most undervalued is the chief of the three — that is, faith. We believe before we acquire the habit of studying and analyzing our consciousnesses. We believe before we learn how to conduct the processes of our logical understanding. We can have much knowledge by our faith without notice of our consciousness and without exertion of our reasoning faculties ; but we can have no knowledge without faith. We can learn nothing from our examination of any consciousness without faith in some principle of observation, comparison, and memory. We can ac- quire no knowledge by our logical understanding without faith in the laws of mental operations. This last statement, if true, places all science on the same basis with religion. Although so familiar to many minds we may take time to show that it is true. For proof let us go to a science which is supposed to demonstrate all its propositions, and examine a student in geometry. We will not call him out on the immortal 47. 1. of Euclid. We can learn all we need from a bright boy who has been studying Euclid a week. The following may represent our colloquy : " Q. Do you know how many right angles may be made by one straight line upon one side of another straight line ? " A. Yes ; two, and only two. Innumerable angles may be made by two straight lines so meeting, but the sum of all the possible angles will be two right angles. " Q. You say you know that. How do you know that you know it ? " A. Because I can prove it. A man knows every proposition which he can demonstrate. " Q. Please prove it to me." The student draws the well-known diagrams. If he follows Euclid he begins with an argument like this : 15 226 CHIPS AND CHUNKS " A. There are obviously two angles made when a straight line stands on another straight line. " O. My eyes show me that. " A. Well, then, those angles are either two right angles or, together, are equal to two right angles. And I prove that in this way : If the two angles made by the lines be equal, each is a right angle according to the definition of a right angle, which may be stated thus: A right angle is one of the two angles made by a straight line on one side of another straight line when both angles are equal. If each is a right angle, and there are only two, because they have taken all the space on that side of the line, it is proved that two right angles are made by two lines in the relation sup- posed, and only two." But if each be not a right angle our young friend proceeds, by the well-known demonstration of Euclid, to show that the sum of the two angles is equal to two right angles ; and when he has finished, and reached the Q. E. D., he and his examiners knoiv that the proposition is true, because he has proved it. But when we ex- amine his argument we find that he has made three unproved as- sumptions ; namely, (i) that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be ; (2) that if equals be added to equals the wholes are equal ; and (3) that things which are equal to the same are equal to one another. It so happens that each of these propositions which he has assumed to be true is, if true, much more important than the proposition which he has proved. Let us point out these three as- sumptions to our bright student, and then resume our catechism. " O. Could you possibly prove this proposition in geometry if any one of those three assumed propositions were not granted? "A. No. " Q. Then, if we deny these assumptions, can you prove them ? " A. No ; but can you deny them ? " Q. No, we cannot deny them, and cannot prove them ; but we believe them, and therefore have granted them to you for argu- ment, and know your proposition of the two right angles to be true, because you have proved it." Now, here is the proposition which Euclid selected as the sim- plest of all demonstrable theorems of geometry, in the demonstra- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 227 tion of which the logical understanding of a student cannot take the first step without the aid of faith. From the student let us go to the master. We go to such a teacher as Euclid, and in the beginning he requires us to believe three propositions, without which there can be no geometry, but which have never been proved, and, in the nature of things, it would seem never could be proved ; namely, that space is infinite in extent, that space is infinitely divisible, and that space is infinitely continu- ous. And we believe them, and use that faith as knowledge, and no more distrust it than we do the results of our logical understand- ings, and are obliged to admit that geometry lays its broad founda- tions on our faith. Now, geometry is the science which treats of forms in their relations in space. The value of such a science for intellectual culture and practical life must be indescribably important, as might be shown in a million of instances. No form can exist without boundaries, no boundaries without lines, no line without points. The beginning of geometric knowledge, then, lies in knowing what a " point " is, the existence of forms depending, it is said, upon the motion of points. The first utterance of geometry, therefore, must be a definition of a point. And here it is : " A point is that which has no parts, or which has no magnitude." At the threshold of this science we meet with a mystery. "A point is" — then, it has existence — " is " what ? In fact, in form, in substance, it is nothing. A logical definition requires that the genus and differentia shall be given. What is the genus of a "point?" Position, of course. Its differentia is plainly seen. It is distinguished from every thing else in this : that every thing else is something somewhere, and a point is nothing somewhere ; every thing HAS some character- istic, a point has none. A point is visible or invisible. Is it visible? Then we can see that which is without parts or magnitude. What is it we see when we do not see any part, do not see any magnitude ? Is it substantial or ideal ? If substantial, how do we detect its substantial existence? If ideal, how can an idea have motion, and by simple motion become a substantial existence ? Are we not reduced to this : Ideals produce substantiate ; or invisible sub- stantiate, upon motion, produce visible substantiate : or that which 228 CHIPS AND CHUNKS is necessary to matter — namely, form — owes its existence to that which is neither substantial nor ideal — to nothing, in fact. The entire and sublime science of geometry, at one time the only in- strument of culture among the Greeks, and so esteemed by Plato that he is said to have written over his door, " Let no one enter here who does not know geometry," in all its conceptions, propo- sitions, and demonstrations, rests upon the conception of that which has no parts, no magnitude. The old saw of the school-men was, " Ex nihilo nihil fit." If each visible solid owes its form to super- ficies, and each superficies its form to lines, and each line its form to a point — and a point has no form, because it has no parts — then, who shall stone the man that cries out, "Ex nihilo geometria fit f" But lay the first three definitions of geometry side by side : I. " A point is that which has no parts, or which has no magnitude." 2. " A line is length without breadth." 3. " The extremities of a line are points." Study these, and you will probably get the following results : That which has no parts produces all the parts of that which occupies space without occupying space, and which, although it occupies no space, has extremities, to the existence of which it owes its own existence ; and those extremities determine the ex- istence of that which has parts made up of multiplications of its extremities which have no parts. Now, you must know at least that much, or else stay out of Plato's house. This useful science, without which men could not measure their little plantations, or construct their little roads on earth, much less traverse and triangulate the ample fields of the skies, lays for its necessary foundation thirty-five definitions, three postulates, and twelve axioms, the last being propositions which no man has ever proved ; and these fifty sentences contain as much that is in- comprehensible, as much that must be granted without being proved, as much that must be believed although it cannot be proved, as can be found in all the theological and religious writings from those of John Scotus Erigena down to those of Richard Wat- son, of England, or Charles Hodge, of Princeton. Does any man charge that this is a mere logical juggle ? Then he shall be called upon to point out wherein it differs from the meth- ods of those who strive to show that there is a real conflict between FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 229 real science and real religion. If any man shall charge me with being an infidel as touching geometry, and try to turn me out of the church of science, I shall become hotly indignant, because I know that Euclid did not believe more in geometry than I do, and I believe as much in the teachings of geometry as I do in the teach- ings of theology, regarding them both, as Aristotle did, as mere human sciences, ranking theology with psychology, geology, and botany. And, being by profession a theologian, I certainly believe in theology. And this brings us back to what was stated in the beginning, as one of the causes of this cry of "conflict." It is the confounding of theology with religion. Theology is not religion any more than psychology is human life, or zoology is animal life, or botany is vegetable life. Theology is a human science ; religion is a real life. Theology is objective ; religion is subjective. Theology is the sci- entific classification of what is known of God ; religion is a loving obedience to God's commandments. Every religious man must have some theology, but it does not follow that every theologian must have some religion. We never knew a religious man without some kind of a theology, nor can we conceive such a case. But we do know some theologians who have little religion, and some that seem to have none. There may be a conflict between theology and some other sciences, and religious men may deplore that conflict, or may not, according to their measure of faith. There are those whose faith is so large and strong that they do not deplore such a conflict, because they know that if, for instance, a conflict should come between geology and theology, and geology should be beaten, it will be so much the better for religion ; and if geology should beat theology, still so much the better for religion : according to the spirit of the old Arabic adage, If the pitcher fall on the stone, so much the worse for the pitcher ; and if the stone fall on the pitcher, so much the worse for the pitcher. Geologists, psychologists, and theologists must all ultimately promote the cause of religion, because they must confirm one another's truths, and explode one another's errors ; and a religious man is a man whose soul longs for the truth, who loves truth because he loves God, who knows if the soul be sanctified it must be sanctified by the truth, even as the mind must be enlarged 230 CHIPS AND CHUNKS and strengthened by the truth. He knows and feels that it would be as irreligious in him to reject any truth found in nature as it would be for another to reject any truth found in the Bible. But there is no necessary conflict between even theology and any other science. Theology has to deal with problems into which the element of the infinite enters. It will therefore have concepts some two of which will be irreconcilable, but not therefore contradictory. For instance, to say that God is " an infinite person " is to state the agreement of two concepts which the human mind is supposed never to have reconciled, and never to be able to reconcile. But they are not contradictory. If one should say that there is in the universe a circular triangle, we should deny it, not because the concept of a triangle is irreconcilable with the concept of a circle, as consistent in the same figure, which is quite true, but because they are con- tradictory. What is irreconcilable to you may be reconcilable to another mind, because " irreconcilable " indicates the relation of the concept to the individual intellect ; but what is contradictory to the feeblest is contradictory to the mightiest mind, because " con- tradictory " represent: the relation of the concepts to one another. In the definition of a person there is nothing to exclude infinity, and in the definition of infinite there is nothing to exclude person- ality. There is no more exclusion between " person " and " infinite " than between " line " and " infinite ; " and yet Ave talk of infinite lines, knowing the irreconcilability of the ideas, but never regarding them as contradictory. Writers of great ability sometimes fall into this indiscrimination. For instance, a writer whom I greatly admire, Dr. Hill, former President of Harvard College, in one paragraph in The Uses of MatJiesis seems twice to employ " contradictory " in an illogical sense, even when he is presenting an illustration which goes to show most clearly that in other sciences, as well as in theology, there are propositions which we cannot refuse to accept, because they are not contradictory, although they are irreconcilable ; in other words, that there are irreconcilable concepts which are not contradictory, for we always reject one or the other of two contra- dictory concepts or propositions. That is so striking an illustration of the mystery of the infinite FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 23 1 that I will reproduce it. On a plane imagine a fixed line, pointing north and south. Intersect this at an angle of ninety degrees by another line, pointing east and west. Let this latter rotate at the point of intersection, and at the beginning be a foot long. At each approach of the rotating line toward the stationary line let the former double its length. Let each approach be made by bisecting the angle. At the first movement the angle would be forty-five degrees and the line two feet in length ; at the second, the angle twenty-two and one-half degrees and the line four feet ; at the third, the angle eleven and one-fourth degrees and the line eight feet ; at the fourth, the angle five and five-eighths degrees and the line sixteen feet ; at the fifth, the angle two and thirteen-sixteenths degrees and the line thirty-two feet, and so on. Now, as this bi- secting of the angle can go on indefinitely before the rotating line can touch the stationary line at all its points, it follows that before such contact the rotating line will have a length which cannot be stated in figures, and which defies all human computation. It can be mathematically demonstrated that a line so rotating, and increas- ing its length in the inverse ratio of its angle with the meridian, will have its end always receding from the meridian and approaching a line parallel to the meridian at a distance of 1.5708. We can show that the rotating line can cross the stationary line by making it do so as on a watch-dial, and yet we can demonstrate that if it be extended indefinitely it can never touch the stationary line, nor come at the end even as near as eighteen inches to it. Here are two of the simplest human conceptions, between which we know that there is no contradiction, rendered absolutely irrecon- cilable to the human intellect by the introduction of the infinite. There is no religion here. And yet there is no mystery in either theology or religion more mysterious than the mystery of the infi- nite, which we may encounter whenever we attempt to set our watches to the right time if they have run more than an hour wrong. Another error has been the occasion of this cry of "conflict." It is the confounding of " the Church" with "religion." This confu- sion has led many an honest soul astray, and is the fallacy where- with shrewd sophists have been able to overthrow the faith of the 232 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ignorant. If the Church — and, in all my treatment of this topic, I must be understood as using " the Church " not as signifying " the holy church universal," but simply in the sense in which antagonistic scientists employ it — if the Church and religion be the same, the whole argument must be given up, and it must be admitted that there is a conflict between religion and science, and that religion is in the wrong. Churchmen are guilty of helping to strengthen, if indeed they are not responsible for creating, this error. It has at length been presented plumply to the world in the book of Professor John William Draper, entitled a History of the Conflict between Re- ligion and Science. The title assumes that there is such a conflict. See how it will read with synonyms substituted : " History of the Conflict between Loving Obedience to God's Word and Intelligent Study of God's Works." Does Dr. Draper believe there is such a conflict? It is not to be supposed that he does. How, then, did he come to give his book such a title? From a confusion of terms, as will be observed by the perusal of three successive sentences in his preface : " The papacy represents the ideas and aspirations of two thirds of the population of Europe. It insists on a political supremacy, . . . loudly declaring that it will accept no reconciliation with modern civilization. The antagonism we thus witness between religion and science," etc. Now, if the " papacy " and " religion " be synonymous terms, representing equivalent ideas, Dr. Draper's book shows that all good men should do what they can to extir- pate religion from the world ; but if they are not — and they are not — then the book is founded on a most hurtful fallacy, and must be widely mischievous. Their share of the responsibility for the harm done must fall to churchmen. No, these are not synonymous terms. " The Church " is not re- ligion, and religion is not " the Church." There may be a church and no religion ; there may be religion and no church, as there may be an aqueduct without water, and there may be water without an aqueduct. God makes water, and men make aqueducts. Water was before aqueducts, and religion before churches. God makes religion, and men make churches. There are irreligious men in every church, and there are very religious men in no church. Any visible, organized church is a mere human institution. It is useful FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 233 for the purpose of propagating religion so long as it confines itself to that function and abstains from all other things. The moment it transcends that limit it is an injurious institution. In either case it is merely human, and we wrong both religion and the Church when we claim for the latter that it is not a human institution. The Church of England is as much a human institution as the Royal Society ; and the same may be said of the Church of Rome and the Royal Florentine Academy. A Church is as much an authority in matters of religion as a society is in matters of science, and no more. " The Church " has often been opposed to science, and so it has to religion, but "the society" has often been opposed to religion, and so it has to science. " The Church," both before and since the days of Christ, has stood in opposition to the Bible, the text-book of Jewish and Christian religionists, quite as often as it has to science. But "the society," or "the academy," has stood in opposition to science quite as often as it has to religion. Sometimes the sin of one has been laid upon the other, and sometimes the property of one has been scheduled as the assets of the other. It is time to protest, in the interests of the truth of God, and in the name of the God of truth, that religion no longer be saddled with all the faults of the churchmen, all the follies of the scientists, and all the crimes of the politicians. It was not religion which brought Galileo to his humiliating retraction, about which we hear so much declamation ; it was " the Church." But why should writers of the history of science so frequently conceal the fact that " the Church" was instigated thereunto not by religious people, but scientific men — by Galileo's collator at eurs ? It was the jealousy of the scientists which made use of the bigotry of the churchmen to degrade a rival in science. They began their attacks not on the ground that religion was in danger, but on such scientific grounds as these — stated by a professor in the University of Padua — namely, that as there were only seven metals, and seven days in the week, and seven apertures in man's head, there could be only seven planets ! And that was some time before these gentle- men of science had instigated the sarcastic Dominican monk to at- tempt to preach Galileo down under the text, Viri Galilcei, quid statis adspicientes in caelum f 234 CHIPS AND CHUNKS In like manner politicians have used "the Church" to overthrow their rivals. "The Church " is the engine which has been turned against freedom, against science, against religion. It would be as logical and as fair to lay all " the Church's " outrages against human rights and intellectual advancement at the door of religion as it would be to lay all its outrages against religion at the door of sci- ence and government, because "the Church" has seldom slaughtered a holy martyr to the truth without employing some forms of both law and logic. Science exists for the sake of religion and because of religion. If there had been no love for God in the human race there had been no study of the physical universe. The visible cosmos is God's love-letter to man ; and religion seeks to probe every corner of the sheet on which such love is written, to examine every phrase and study every connection. A few upstarts of the present day, not the real men and masters of science, ignore the fact that almost every man who has made any great original contribution to science, since the revival of letters, was a very religious man ; but their weak wickedness must not be charged to science any more than the wicked weakness of ecclesiastics to religion. Copernicus (born 1473), who revolutionized astronomy, was one of the purest Christians who ever lived — a simple, laborious minister of religion, walking beneficently among the poor by day, and living among the stars by night ; and yet one writer of our day has dared to say, in what he takes to be the interest of science, that Coper- nicus was " aware that his doctrines were totally opposed to revealed truth. " Was any thing worse ever perpetrated by theologian or even ecclesiastic? Could any man believe in any doctrine which he knew was opposed to any truth, especially if he believed that God had revealed that truth? It were impossible, especially with a man having the splendid intellect and the pure heart of Copernicus, who died believing in his " De Orbium Ccelestium Revolutionists " and also in the Bible. And this is the inscription which that humble Christian ordered for his tomb : " Non parent Paulo veniam requiro, gratiam Petri neque posco / sed quam i?t crucis ligno dederis latroni } sedulus oro" Tycho Brahe (born 1546), who, although he did not produce a FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 235 system which won acceptance, did, nevertheless, lay the foundation for practical astronomy and build the stairs on which Kepler mounted to his grand discoveries, was a most religious man. He introduces into one of his scientific works (Astronomic? Instaiiratio Mechanica, p. A) this sentence : " No man can be made happy and enjoy mortal life but through the merits of Christ, the Redeemer, the Son of God, and by the study of his doctrines and imitation of his example." John Kepler (born 1571) was a man in whose life the only conflict between science and religion seemed to be as to which should yield the most assistance to the other. He wrought as under Luther's motto, " Orasse est studisse." He prayed before he worked, and shouted afterward. The more he bowed his soul in prayer the higher his intellect rose in its discoveries; and as those discoveries thickened on his head it bowed in humbler adoration. And so that single man was able to do more for science than all the irreligious scientists of the last three centuries have accomplished, while he bore an appalling load of suffering w T ith a patience that was sublime, and, dying, left this epitaph for his tombstone : "In Christ pie obiit" Of Sir Isaac Newton's, and Michael Faraday's, and Sir William Hamilton's, and Sir James Y. Simpson's religious life, not to men- tion the whole cloud of witnesses, we need not tell what is known to all men. But the history of science shows that not the most gifted, not the most learned, not the most industrious, gain the loftiest vision, but that only the pure in heart see God. And all true sci- ence is a new sight of God. Herbert Spencer says: "Science may be called an extension of the perceptions by means of reasoning." (Recent Discussions, p. 60.) And we may add, Religion may be called an extension of the per- ceptions by means of faith. And, having so said, have we not para- phrased Paul?' " Faith is confidence in things hoped for, conviction of things not seen." (Heb. xi, 1.) Science has the finite for its domain, religion the infinite ; science deals with the things seen, and religion with the things not seen. When Dr. Hutton, of Edin- burgh, announced, in the last century, " In the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end," it is said that scientific men were startled and religious men were 236 CHIPS AND CHUNKS shocked. Why should they be? The creation of the universe and its end are not questions of science, and can be known only as revealed to faith. And so Paul says: " Through faith we apprehend intellectually that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that that which is seen may have sprung from that which is not seen." (Heb. xi. 3.) But we must close. While preparing this address it has been my almost daily custom to pass the massive Masonic Temple recently erected in the city of New York. Before its portals stand two stately columns, known to the brethren of the Masonic Order as Jachin and Boaz. On each rests a globe. In going to my study in the morning I pass first the column which supports the celestial globe, and as I return to my home in the evening I pass first the column which supports the terrestrial globe. One day it came to me that here there stood, in solid symmetry and solemn resemblance, the symbols of these twins of God, who did not struggle in the infinite womb as Isaac's sons contended before they were born, and whose children should not fight on the fields of the finite as the descendants of Jacob and Esau have contended for inheritances which are corruptible and which pass away. The most sacred thing in the " sanctum sanctorum " of the ancient Hebrew tabernacle and temple was the Ark of the Covenant — the law; God's testimony to his sense of right; the solitary autograph in human letters of the Eternal, written on stone, inscribed by the very fingers of the Lord God Almighty. Over the ark which held the law God ordered that a mercy-seat should be placed. " His tender mercies are over all his works," and so his mercy-seat covered his testimony. When Adam and Eve had been driven forth the cherubim had stood at Eden's gate, while a flaming sword turned every way. They were placed there as guardians to keep the way of the tree of life. In the tabernacle the cherubim re- appear, but come without the sword ; stretching forth their wings on high, covering the mercy-seat with their wings, and gazing down on the awful mystery of love overlapping law, and law upholding love. Behold, I have a vision of the cherubim. The Ark is carried into the temple not made with hands, eternal FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 237 in the heavens. The cherubim are instinct with life to the outer- most tip of each mighty pinion. The very glory of God descends to make his everlasting throne upon the everlasting mercy-seat, which covers the everlasting seat of law. Before the infinite majesty of that glory the cherubim arise and stand in front of God, and as they arise the sounds of their quivering wings are heard to the outer court of all the temple of the universe, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh. See how they stand, so vast and so superb ! The one who has the place by the right hand of the Omnipotent lifts up himself, and all the glory of all the suns is on his brow, and each great wing is like an unmeasured milky-way, a-shimmer with the mystic splendor of all stars. The one who has the place nearest the infinite heart of Immortal Love lifts up himself. His brow is fairer than the light of that morning when all the sons of God shouted for joy. His eyes are lovelier than the sapphired tent that pavilions the eternal throne. His lips are ravishingly sweet with the best beauty that comes from the kisses of the Lord. His wings are pinions whose plumes of whiteness shed thoughts of purity down on angelic minds, and whose immense sweep fans all the love-flames glowing in seraphic hearts. Twain they stand, and twain they turn, until hierarchic circles kindle into rapture at the sight. Even God delights himself in their surpassing glory and smiles upon them until their vast hearts can no longer hold their divinest joy. Twain they sing. The cherub of the snow-white wings and palpitating heart breaks heaven's ecstatic silence with the chant, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!" The cherub of the starry wings and throbbing brain gives anti- phone, " Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory." The heavens can keep silence no more, but seraphim and cheru- bim, angels and archangels, shout, shout up at the throne of love and law, " Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High!" and, from the farthest reach of thought and feeling, all the company of heaven fill the temple of God with the multitudinous and musical thunder of the united and overwhelming, "Amen, and Amen!" And the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, 238 CHIPS AND CHUNKS our Saviour, wraps those interlocked cherubim in his loving arms and thrills the heavens with his royal edict, " What God hath joined together let not man put asunder." Those cherubim sublime are science and religion. As they had no struggle with each other when God gave them birth, as they had no conflict guarding the ark of law and love, as they shall have no discord when leading the choirs of eternity, so they have no conflict now. At the opening of this great University heaven and earth unite in saying, " If any man in these halls shall ever teach that there is real conflict between real science and real religion, let that man be anathema maranatha" [Pausing a moment at the close of his address Dr. Deems turned to Governor Porter, and said :] Your Excellency: Our friend, whose name this institution bears, has communicated with you by letter, expressing his appreciation of your excellency's courtesy in giving the emphasis of your official solicitation to the consideration extended him by the municipal authorities of Nashville, in the expression of their desire to make him the city's guest during these festive days of the inauguration of the University. He did me the honor to request me to bring to your excellency his respectful salutations, and to assure you that good and sufficient reasons exist for his absence, which is due to no lack of interest in this great Commonwealth of Tennessee, nor in this good city of Nashville, nor in this young University, for which he has done what he has done trusting that it will promote the general interests of learning and of this whole nation, without regard to sect or sec- tion. [Applause.] I have taken this occasion to make to you, publicly, a communi- cation which might have been rendered in private had fitting op- portunity occurred. Since I came to my place in this chapel, sir, a telegram has been handed me which I shall take the liberty of reading to the whole audience. [The speaker then took from the desk an envelope, which he opened, and read the following telegram :] FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 239 New York, Oct. 4. — To Dr. Charles F. Deems: Peace and good- will to all men. C. Vanderbilt. This evoked hearty and prolonged applause from the audience. [Gazing a few moments on the portrait of Commodore Vanderbilt, which hung on the wall to his left, Dr. Deems, with great tender- ness of feeling, quoted the passage of Holy Scripture (Acts x. 31) :] Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God. [The eyes of the audience having been turned to the Commodore's portrait this remark of Dr. Deems kindled a degree of enthusiasm that found vent in an emphatic outburst of approval. The scene was one of a highly impressive and even dramatic force.] LETTERS TO THE " POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY." [At the time of the delivery of the Vanderbilt University address the Popular Science Monthly, published in New York city, was edited in the interests of opposition to the Christian religion. Its comments on my speech led to the following letters.] I.—" THE CONFLICT OF THE AGES." To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly : Dear Sir : I have read this morning, with great pleasure, the arti- cle by President White, in the February number of your magazine, and am free to express gratification at seeing the extracts from my Vanderbilt University address placed in such " goodlie companie." But you must permit me to express my surprise at the tone and some of the statements which you make with regard to the two articles, and to the important subject which they discuss. You say that you print my argument because it is " on the other side of the question," and you would " not be accused of partiality or injustice to opposite views." This is utterly unaccountable to me. Presi- dent White and myself are in perfect accord in our articles so far as " the conflict " is concerned, so much so that, if we had had a confer- ence previous to the preparation of our two addresses we could scarcely have selected modes of treatment different from those we adopted. We should possibly have changed the order of the print- 240 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ing, and let his follow mine. Mine is a statement of doctrine, and his the proof. He has written almost nothing in his article which I might not have written if I had had his ability. He brings a masterly analysis and great wealth of learning to prove what I have asserted, and nothing in his article seems to stand against any thing in mine. We hold the same thesis, and sometimes express our ideas ipsissimis verbis. We both agree, if I have not utterly misap- prehended President White, that religious men make mistakes, and scientific men make mistakes, but there is no conflict between true religion and true science, the warfare of science being with some- thing other than religion. The first words of mine which you quote are these : " The recent cry of the ' Conflict of Religion and Science ' is fallacious, and mischievous to the interests of both science and religion" (p. 434). President White, in the first sentence of his thesis says: " In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion . . . has resulted in direct evils both to religion and to science, and invariably" (p. 385). There we agree, and each undertakes to show the same thing in his own way. President White, in the second sentence of his thesis, says : " All untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time, to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion and of science." In divers places in my article the same is set forth and maintained. On page 444 I say, " If, for instance, a conflict should come between geology and theology, and geology should be beaten, it will be so much the better for religion ; and, if geology should beat theology, still so much the better for religion," etc. In the next sentence, " geologists, psychologists, and theologists, must all ULTI- MATELY promote the cause of religion, because they must confirm one another's truths and explode one another's errors," etc. And, next sentence, u He (the religious man) knows and feels that it would be as irreligious in him to reject any truth found in Nature as it would be for another to reject any truth found in the Bible." Now, on this showing, my dear sir, I think that in a review of the two articles you should be ready to admit that Dr. White and I are not on " opposite " sides. We are advocates for the same client, speaking from different briefs but promoting the same cause. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 241 But I am sorry to find that, while I thoroughly agree with Dr. White, you do not. You consider the conflict to be " natural," " in- evitable," " wholesome." Dr. White teaches that " the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion " is " the most unfortunate of all ideas " (p. 403). You oppose Dr. White more than you do me, for my moderate statement is that it is " fallacious " and " mischievous." I would fain " labor " with you, as some of our religious brethren say. It grieves me that you hold that an antagonism be- tween loving obedience to God — Religion, and intelligent study of God's works — Science, is " natural," " inevitable," " wholesome." If that be true it would seem to follow that the more religious a man is the less scientific he can be, or, what is worse, that the more scientific a man the less religious can he be ! Really you cannot mean what your statements logically convey. You cannot mean to teach that, the more wicked a man is, the better he is prepared for scientific investigation. But do not your words mean that ? To prove that there is a necessary conflict you call attention to " the attitude of mind of the great mass of devout and sincerely religious people toward the more advanced conclusions and scientific men of the present day." Who can tell what attitude that is? Each man knows his circle of acquaintances ; and here is my testi- mony : All " the devout and sincerely religious people " with whom I am acquainted accept all the " conclusions " of science so far as they know them. Some of them go further, and accept even the hypotheses and guesses of the most poetic and superstitious of " the scientific men of the day." The body of devout religious people, however, it is fair to add, do not accept all the guesses. All that can be reasonably asked of the religious people is that they shall accept as scientific " conclusions " only those teachings of science in regard to which there is no controversy among scientific men. A case cannot be called " concluded " while the argument is going on in court. The rotundity of the earth, the heliocentric theory, Kepler's three laws, are " concluded." No scientific man of repute expresses the slightest doubt of those, and the attitude of religious people toward them is one of thorough acceptance and genuine faith. There are some religious people who are evolution- 16 242 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ists. Some are not. But the scientific men, " as such " arc just as much divided, so that that question cannot be called concluded. As to the attitude of religious people toward advanced scientific men it would be difficult to determine, because it would be difficult to determine who are the " advanced " scientific men. Whenever they settle that among themselves your question will really have great importance ; but if a clique should cry up one man as a burning and shining light in science, while the French Academy should be reported to have rejected him, when nominated for membership, on the ground that he is not scientific* need religious people have any attitude toward him at all ? But that there is no hostile attitude toward scientific men is shown by the fact that any scientific lecturer of ability may come from Europe to America, and the devout and religious people of the country will go in throngs to hear him, and pay liberally for the privilege. You close your article by expressing the opinion that a " desira- ble consummation " to " reach " would be " the entire indifference of religious people, as such, to the results of scientific inquiry." This is amazing. How can they be ? Religious people who are not scientific know very well, having had their attention freshly called thereto by Dr. White, the great benefits conferred on religion by the progress of science, which, as he admirably says, has " given to religion great new foundations, great new ennobling conceptions, a great new revelation of the might of God." Religious people owe too much to science, while science owes almost every thing to relig- ious people, to allow them to become entirely indifferent and give up science wholly to irreligious men. One thing let us agree on before we part. Nothing is advanced and no one is profited if religious men write and speak as though no man could be scientific and at the same time religious ; nor is any thing profited if men professing to be scientific talk of religious people patronizingly, as if they were simpletons. Can you not say " Amen " to that ? — and shake hands with Very respectfully and truly yours. New- York, January 27, 1876. * This was asserted at the time in regard to Mr. Darwin. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE, 243 II.— "WHAT CONSTITUTES RELIGION?" To the Editor of The Popular Science Monthly : Dear Sir: The use of my name twice in your notice of Mr. Fiske's new work on The Unseen World, in your May number, per- haps justifies me in soliciting a small space for comment on some expressions in that notice. You are defending Dr. Draper from Mr. Fiske's trenchant attacks. To that there can be no objection. Confederates are justified in standing by one another ; but I do not think that you are justified in saying that " the point of contention is as to what constitutes religion." So far from there being contention on that point there is really no important difference. All " sects/' no matter how much they " eat each other up in their denial of dogmas," as you affirm, agree as to what religion is. It does not seem edifying to behold in you the temper which dictates the first of the following sentences, although the exceeding generosity of the careful proposal in the second has a redeeming -flavor. " We hope that the agree- ment of Messrs. Brownson, Hill, Washburn, Deems, Fiske & Co., in denouncing the groundlessness of the 'conflict,' will not be con- strued as implying any agreement among the parties as to what religion is. If these gentlemen will get together and settle the point an important step will be gained, and l^he Popular Science Monthly will gladly pay the expenses of a convention of reasonable length for such a purpose ; but we stipulate not to foot the bills until they reach an agreement." For the other gentlemen I cannot answer, but I simply say that I never did " denounce the groundlessness of the conflict," but have announced it and endeavored to demonstrate it, and you are wit- ness that I am " vehement in asserting the groundlessness and ab- surdity of Dr. Draper's assumption" of the conflict (page 113). Why are you so anxious to keep your readers from believing that the gentlemen whose names you have recited in fact do not, and really cannot, disagree as to what is " religion ?" Have you ever seen any thing in our writings or heard any thing in our oral teachings to justify the supposition that we do not agree ? As you challenge us, I accept the challenge for my part. I will not expose you to the 244 CHIPS AND CHUNKS cost of a convention, but here, in my study, without consultation with any of the other gentlemen you name, I venture to give two definitions of religion, in both of which I venture to predict that all those gentlemen, if they see this letter, will heartily agree, and that these definitions will win the assent also of Archbishop McCloskey, Bishop Potter, Bishop Foster, Bishop Wightman, Chancellor Crosby, Rev. Dr. Armitage, and Rev. Dr. Storrs, representatives of the leading " sects." To give the least first, here is my own definition : Religion is loving obedience to God's will. No matter how or where that will is discovered, nor what it is, he is a religious man who does what he believes will please God, because he loves God. The second is authoritative. It is that of St. James (i, 27): " True religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this : To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." A life of inward purity and outward beneficence is a religious life. I venture to think you may pass these around the whole circle of religionists and find unanimity. But do not we religionists disa- gree ? Certainly. The five gentlemen you have mentioned, and the seven whom I have named, differ more or less, oftener more than less, and on some points apparently irreconcilably. But mark : we never differ in our religion ; it is in our science. The moment two men become scientific, whether they are religious or not, they begin to " eat each other up in their denial of dogmas." So long as we keep to religion we are one. Our hearts are together. It is only with our heads that we butt one another. I have worshiped God in company with each of the seven distinguished clergymen whom I have ventured to name, and yet there is not one of them who does not hold some dogma of doctrine or ecclesiasticism to which I cannot subscribe. As religionists we agree. As scientists we differ. It is on the ground of our theology that we differ, and that is purely a scientific ground. Be pleased always to remember that theology is only a science like geology, or biology. But, my dear sir, we theologians would be out of fashion if we did not " eat each other up in our denial of dogmas." All other scien- tists do. The dogma of heterogenesis tries to " eat up " the dogma FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 245 of homogenesis, while the dogma of pangenesis is fairly bursting itself to swallow both the others bodily ; and there is no small con- flict between spontaneity and heredity, and meanwhile biosis is striving vigorously to hold its ground against archebiosis. Behold! are not Religion and Life the two greatest subjects? You are quite anxious that your readers shall fancy that religionists cannot agree in their definitions of religion. But you do not show them that even on the subject of Life the scientists are greatly at difference. Professor Owen says that " Life is a sound ;" Schelling says it is a " tendency." Herbert Spencer calls it " a continuous ad- justment." Dr. Meissner says it is " but motion." Dr. Bastian holds that he has produced plants and animals from inorganic matter. Schultz positively believes it never was done and cannot be done ; and Professor Huxley holds that " constructive chemistry could do nothing without the influence of pre-existing living pro- toplasm." I do not wish to crowd your pages, and so content myself with these few instances out of the multitudes of conflicting and per- plexing differences among " advanced thinkers." Even you, my dear sir, have not utterly escaped. You once wrote : " If the forces are correlated in organic growth and nutri- tion, they must be in organic action." Manifestly, after that sentence was written, you meditated, and, meditating, you discovered that the sequitur was not quite as apparent as it ought to be. You did not strike out the sentence, but you apologized for it handsomely by saying, " From the great complexity of the conditions the same exactness will not be expected here as in the inorganic field." But you see, my dear sir, that theology is a science which has for its field those subjects in which there is the greatest complexity of con- ditions, and you must not demand of your brother scientists as much exactness in the statements of a metaphysical proposition as you may in the statement of the length of a fish's tooth. But as to your statement that the forces must be correlated in organic action, are you not in danger of being " eaten up " by the statements of your friends, Bastian, Barker, and, what is still harder on you, Herbert Spencer ? Professor Barker teaches that the correlation of the natural forces with thought " has never yet been 246 CHIPS AND CHUNKS measured." Then it is a mere " guess." Dr. Bastian says that it " cannot be proved " that sensation and thought are truly the direct results of molecular activity. Then it is a mere " guess." Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose name is conclusive authority with you, and who, I am most frank to admit, knows as much about the " unknow- able " as any writer whose works I have read, says that the outer force and the inward feeling it excites " do not even maintain an unvarying proportion." Then it is a mere " guess." And, my dear sir, I do most heartily agree with your statement, " not he who guesses is to be esteemed the true discoverer, but he who demon- strates a new truth." Now, if Messrs. Spencer, Barker, Tyndall, Huxley, Biichner, Draper, Youmans, " & Co.," will " get together and settle " what life is, or thought, " an important step will be gained ; " and, not to be outdone by your generosity, I will engage to " pay the ex- penses of a convention of reasonable length for such a purpose," but I " stipulate not to foot the bills until you reach an agree- ment." Trusting that both you and I, as we grow older, may have more science and more religion, and room enough in our heads and hearts for both without "conflict," I am, very faithfully, your co-laborer. May, 1876. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 247 CHUNKS FOR THE THOUGHTFUL. A PLEA FOR WORKING-WOMEN. [Preached in behalf of the '* Working-Women's Protective Union," on the evening of April 12, 1868.] Called upon to preach in behalf of the Working-Women's Pro- tective Union, I feel at once a pride and a shame of my work. It is good to be proud of the confidence implied by the invitation to speak a word for any fellow-being supposed to be under the ban or under the burden ; but it is a shame that in the nineteenth of the Christian centuries there exists in society the necessity of a union to protect working-women. You have no " protective " associations to care for working-men, or for men who do not work ; and society is such that they do not need it. But here you have presented to you a body of persons banded together to " protect " women; and not idling, frivolous, empty, worthless women, but women who work ! The suggestion of the necessity of such a society is amazing. You must indulge me a little that I may turn the idea about in my mind and become a little used to such a monstrosity. That woman, who gave birth to men and women ; woman, who is mother, playmate, teacher, sister, sweetheart, wife, to the world ; woman, that has something in her tender eyes, her sensitive lips, her very motions, that appeals to every thing just and generous in human nature ; that she, who, if she did not protect the world, could totally depopulate the earth in thirty-five years ; that she, not in sickness, not in idleness, not in crime, but when she is working, should need " protection," is monstrous. From whom ? It ought not to be from fellow-workers, of the male sex or of her own. Every assistant lightens the load, and it does not matter whether the hand be masculine or feminine so that the work is done. It ought not to be from any non-worker of either sex, as they owe their immunity to the industry of these laborers, and the more that labor the sooner will the world's work be done, and the more general rest there will be and the less blame to those who toil not. 248 CHIPS AND CHUNKS And yet working-women do need protection ; and that is all they claim : " Protect us merely, keep off imposition and injustice, and we will do the rest." It is unreasonable and unrighteous that they should need protection ; but, if their plea be as I have just stated it, it is both reasonable and righteous. It is easy to understand how, in the fourteenth century before Christ, the working-woman whose case is in the text and context, should need protection ; and our hearts warm toward the respectable and reasonable gentleman who constituted himself a " protective " in behalf of Ruth ; but after Jesus and Mary, that human society should go radically wrong through nearly two chiliads of years, upon a question so absorbingly and universally interesting and important, is amazing. It is part of the legitimate work of the gospel ministry to apply the ethics of Jesus to the solution of the problems of society, and to show an earnest and tender interest in behalf of all that are in any way wronged. In the discharge of that duty to-night I must solicit a large liberty, and, if some things I say may not be in accord with the theories of the patrons of the association, they will believe that my heart is in concord with theirs, and my desire is as earnest as theirs to bring society to correct views and right action in this department. In the beginning we may as well disabuse our minds of any errors into which we have fallen or been led in regard to the dig- nity of labor/ There is no dignity in labor in the sense of taxing toil. It is a degradation, a curse, the fruit of sin. It is an abnormal condition for a human being, made in the intellectual and moral like- ness of God. Holy Scripture plainly teaches that. And all the instincts of men teach that. Every effort of every toiler is to put himself in such a condition as to render toil unnecessary. Men work hard that they may the sooner cease to work hard. The very men who write books and deliver lectures on the " dignity of labor," striving to glorify inglorious moiling in the dirt and the deep deg- radation of unloved and uneasy work, go through the drudgery of labor that they may obtain that which will procure some beautiful paradise on the Hudson or elsewhere, where they need no longer whip up their bodies and minds, like dray-horses, to pull the loads of life. The burden-bearers bow themselves and sing the songs of toil FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 249 that they may forget their troubles ; and to preserve their self- respect they cherish all the words you speak to them about " the dignity of labor." But the very phrase has a sardonic grin and a tone of bitter sarcasm. Dignity, indeed ! There are operations of the intellect and exertions of the body which may be in accord with dignity, but they are such only as give pleasure while performed, and leave no pain, no head-ache, no heart-ache, no limb-ache behind, and are such as one returns to with as much alacrity as one leaves. The work of God is such. He never wearies himself. When we speak of God " resting from his work " we can only mean that his work ceased. So when Adam and Eve were in paradise, and went to bed when they wished, and rose when they chose, and tended and trimmed the vines and bushes of their garden, making no fatiguing exertion, never weary, taking just such exercise as made repose sweet ; trim- ming no midnight lamp ; void of anxiety as to the morrow's break- fast ; untroubled as to the condition of some distant part of their plantation ; without knowledge of alarm-clocks, factory-bells, bank hours, business engagements, work to be done, work to be undone, work to be taken home, and all the other discomforts of modern toil and modern civilization, the anxieties that make premature wrinkles, and the wrenching work which pumps copious sweat from men and women — then there was dignity in work, for it was the unwearying work of a gentleman and the unfatiguing work of a lady, "the grand old gardener and his wife." But Patrick digging in the sewer and Biddy scrubbing in the suds do not strike us as being eminently suggestive of dignity. Come look at this person in a cheerless and chairless garret, sitting on an empty soap-box, in a thin, torn calico frock — " in unwomanly rags, With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, Plying her needle and thread In poverty, hunger and dirt." Go stand under her shattered roof and on her naked floor, in the dull December light or when the weather is warm and bright, and speak to her who has 250 CHIPS AND CHUNKS " No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief — A little weeping would ease her breast ; But in their briny bed Her tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread." Tell her of the dignity of labor, the nobility of toil. You will seem, as you will be, a heartless mocker of the unfortunate. Go to the poor lace-maker who works in a cellar, because the threads which her cun- ning fingers make into marvelous beauty are so exceedingly fine that they must be wrought in a damp place, and while she aches with her rheumatisms and feels that she is bringing on blindness, that night in which no woman can work, tell her of the " dignity " of labor! Go to the poor writer, racking her brain for plot and incident, for sentiment and rhyme, for what will make a " sensation," will sell to the editor or publisher ; an unloved work, not the spontaneous outgush of hearty poetry, but bitter waters laboriously pumped up from the almost dry wells of her brain and her heart, for a pittance which merely brings enough to keep soul and body together — meet her on the way from office to office in rusty garments and darned gaiters, and tell her of the " dignity " of labor ! They will tell you that they seem naturally to prefer the dignity of the lady who wears the laces of the one and reads the books of the other. They will tell you that it seems so strange to them that if there be dignity in labor there never has been found yet a solitary man or woman, since the day Adam and Eve went fleeing from the swords of cherubim down to this blessed date, who has sought the dignity of labor. Millions have struggled for the dignity of place, of power, of learning, of wealth, of honor, of social position, of thrones, scepters, and crowns, but never a human being for the dig- nity of labor. Every body wants the dignity, but nobody wants the labor. It is a notion, a sham, a pretense, a lie ! There is no dig- nity in an undesired, an unloved or forced, a painful, a wearing toil. He or she that endures it may be white or black, may have suffrage or be without ballot, but he or she is a slave, and doing the work of a slave, whether the master be known or unknown. But there may be a very great worthiness and a very noble dig- nity in the man or woman who is toiling in poverty, weakness, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 25 1 wretchedness, in mine, or smithy, or shop, or cheerless cellar or attic. There is a dependence upon others worse than the worst labor. There may be an alternative more degrading than the most degrad- ing toil. There is no labor so undignified as a cowardly shirking of one's responsibilities. There is no employment so mean as not to be chosen before an inane giving up to die of mere inefficiency. The strong swimmer in his agony has more dignity than the floating corpse. Immunity from painful exertion of limb or brain may be purchased at the price of the surrender of virtue and honor, of peace of conscience and of self-respect. The price is too great for the purchase. Frequently it happens, in the chances and changes of this mortal life, that a man comes into such position that the very existence of those to whom he is bound by every human tie depends upon his giving his whole life to a drudgery, incomplete, unwholesome, irk- some, and contrary to all his natural instincts and cultivated tastes. To prefer all lowness of position and all loads of labor before the suffering of those we love, that is really dignity ; but the dignity is in the man, not in this dirty work. It is the break of day. Painfully do the first rays of the winter sun break through the soiled and cobwebbed window-panes of a garret on the outskirts of the city. A poor, thin girl rises from her poor bed, on which all the clothes of herself and her little brother have been piled to keep them endurably warm through the cold night. It was midnight when she retired ; he had been in bed sev- eral hours ; she had worked on by the dim light flung from a gut- tering candle, wasting away at the top of a bottle. Through those solitary hours her heart had gone back to her childhood ; to the birth of that little brother when she was ten years old, to her father's struggle against the stream, to his death, to her mother's widow- hood and speedy decline and departure, to the hour when she stood in all the world with no relative but that little brother ; to the resolve she made to be father and mother and sister to that boy until he would be able to take his place among men. Her needle sewed all those memories with her seams, and when the midnight hour struck she dropped her work from chilled fingers and lay down beside her little brother, her head burning, her feet so cold she dared not touch 25: CHIPS AND CHUNKS him lest he cry. And now when the morning came, after her uneasy sleep, she rises stiffly on her aching limbs and counts a few coals out of that a bushel of which has cost her the making of a coat. And by this little fire she must work through all the day and take no time to rest. A coat must be made for the fire ; two shirts must be made for the rent ; and then, if she has strength to make any thing more, that may go for food ; and if the three meals of her brother and her- self cost fifty cents she must make six flannel shirts, or nine heavy overalls for men. At night she must cross the ferry and thread the streets and carry her work home and bring back another bundle, draggling through snow and slush in poor, thin raiment. Is there any dignity in that labor? None whatever. Is there any dignity in that young woman's character? Much every way. She prefers toil to crime. She has a dignity unknown to the bediz- ened courtezan who spreads her painted charms to every lounger on the steps of St. Nicholas and Fifth Avenue hotels brazingly gazing at every passing woman. And, my fair and virtuous sisters, dear ladies of my congregation, ye roses of the fashionable avenues, ye lilies of the broad streets, so like the flowers in that ye toil not, neither do ye spin, and yet in your array surpassing even Solomon when he was playing dandy- husband to a thousand wives, let me tell even you that that working- girl, in all her toil and drudgery, has more dignity in the eyes of true men and of God than you with all the fine point of your manners and all the Vere de Vere repose of your caste. She prefers to bend her body rather than her soul, and to crush her flesh rather than sacrifice her spirit. Perhaps, also, we may do well to disabuse our minds of some errors as to women as well as some errors as to work. I know how gingerly one is expected to walk where there are so many traps of prejudice set about in the social garden. What is woman s sphere ? That is the question fundamental to the whole discussion, as all must admit. And that is precisely the question which no one is pre- pared to answer. In general the sphere of any creature is supposed to be its circuit of motion, action, employment or influence. Surely to do nothing is no sphere at all. Of any human creature, perhaps, we should all agree to say that his sphere is the position in which he FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 253 can most readily do that thing which his nature and his acquirements enable him to do best. In this view what is woman s sphere? I confess I do not know, for the reason that I do not know of woman what it is she can do best. There are, perhaps, a few things which most women have done better than most men ; some things that men, perhaps, have done better than most women. At least, there is a popular opinion to that effect. But whether there is any thing that woman can do better than man, or man than woman, is an open question. And it is open because neither sex has had a fair chance. Law or custom or prejudice has embarrassed each in an attempt to find what could be done most pleasurably and most suc- cessfully. It has brought a sneer upon Hercules to take the distaff from Omphale, and upon Omphale to take the club from Hercules. Why no one can tell. But a sneer hurts, whether it have a reason in it or not, and the history of the world shows that men and women are led less by their own noses than by the noses of other people. There are many things to be done for individual, domestic and social comfort, refinement and advancement. Food is to be obtained and cooked, shelters are to be devised and erected, clothing is to be fashioned and made, houses and clothes are to be repaired and kept clean, laws are to be framed, interpreted, and executed, articles are to be transported from place to place, and the young are to be instructed in the ethical and physical principles involved in these several occupations. Probably that simple summary will include all the pursuits of men : agriculture, architecture, trade, commerce, navigation, government, art, science, mechanism, literature, house- keeping, and the making of all the implements, and the shaping of all the materials necessary for the successful prosecution of all these pursuits. Now, suppose you show that among these that are ordinarily con- fined to women, or rather to which women have been ordinarily confined, there are some which many men can do as well or better. Why not let the me,n do those things without feeling that they lose in public estimation ? There are men who can make fires, wash clothes, darn stockings, construct garments, keep house, set tables, aye, and even nurse babes in a style which it was never given to any woman to surpass, and to very few to equal. Why should not that 254 CHIPS AND CHUNKS be that man's sphere ? On the other hand, if a woman can write a book, or manage a bank, or conduct a business, or preside over a railroad company, or do any other legitimate thing better than any man who happens at the time to be free for this work, why should she not do it? Can any man give against her a reason which rises above the altitude of a prejudice? It does seem to be most reasonable that each human being should be allowed to do that which he or she can do with most ease, most pleasure, and most profit. This division of the whole heaven of humanity into two spheres — a sphere for man and a sphere for woman — seems eminently absurd. Each soul must find a sphere for itself, on the general principle just laid down. If the man in the study is a better cook than the woman in the kitchen, and she a better thinker and writer than he, do let him go down among the pots, and let her go up among the pens, and let us have done with sickly, atrabilious theology or politics, and with badly-cooked food, and let us have better books and better dinners, two people cured of dyspepsia, and affairs generally more harmonious and pleasing to the heavenly Father. The world wants good food and plenty of it, good and sufficient clothing and houses, convenient modes of transit and transport, and it wants books, pictures, statues, and it wants every thing and any thing that ministers to physical and intellectual pleasure. Why should the world make a fool of itself by its senseless fastid- iousness, and prefer to have some things worse done because done by women, and other things worse done because done by men ? I want the very best house, and do not care whether it was man or woman that drew the design, or man or woman that laid the courses of stone in its erection. Let us be reasonable, and the whole necessity for the existence of a " Working-Woman's Protective Union " will utterly disappear from society. That necessity has been created by prejudices. It seems impracticable for the men that are in the world to do all that is necessary to be done to support themselves, and also support all the women and all the children ; or else, among men there are so many idlers and non-producers that some women must be pushed into the working-ranks to keep the world above the mark of starva- FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 2 5 5 tion. As these women step forward they need protection until they can have gained so firm a footing that they can protect them- selves. 1. They need protection against the prejudices which exclude women from many an employment to which they are adapted by their physical and mental characteristics. Any employment which unfits a woman for the proper discharge of her duties as wife, mother, sister, or daughter, is an improper employment for the woman ; all other employments are legitimate. That seems to be the verdict of reason. And yet women are frowned upon, pushed back, and discouraged when seeking to do those rightful things, and when the choice is simply between doing those things and starvation or crime. There are those in this community who have no interest in woman's find- ing proper work, as in that case it diminishes the number of those who minister to the criminal indulgences of society. But honest people do have such an interest. If having stated paid work to do does not incapacitate a man for all the demands upon him as a lover, husband, father, or friend, why should similar pursuits be supposed to be injurious to a woman ? 2. The Protective Union can do the work of finding employment for women who are not able to look up this work for themselves. It is a very easy thing to tell women to go and find more feminine or more remunerative work ; but how are they to do it ? There is a mother with her child. If that mother works sixteen hours a day she can barely obtain enough to pay for the rent of her wretched room, and enough coal to keep her and her child from freezing, and enough food to keep their souls in their bodies. She must not stop a day, not an hour, or she is turned upon the streets, or lies down to starve beside her child. She has not an inch of margin. She works up side by side with the grim specter of starvation. If she hold tightly to it she keeps starvation off the domain of life ; but let her stop a day and wear down her strength by tramping the streets in search of better work, and starvation wins the ground. She weakens, she faints, she dies. Who is her friend to ward off such an emergency? This Protective Union. It finds sympathy, help, place, and work for her. 3. It seeks to protect her in her health. That is a working- 256 CHIPS AND CHUNKS woman s capital. That gone she is bankrupt. And many a woman comes from the country rich in exuberant health who is poisoned by foul air and wretched food. Some of these women work at home, some in places provided by their employers. In the latter instance, if you will take the pains to-morrow to make a tour of Broadway, going ten squares up or down from where I speak to-night, and will visit the shops of great manufacturers and fashionable dress-makers on that great thoroughfare and the streets which cross it, you will find some places where as many as thirty women are working in a room twelve feet by twenty, and up to a late bed-time by gas each burner of which has the same effect upon the atmosphere as the work of ten pairs of human lungs ; and in that foulness how I have seen women fading and perishing ! Some of these work-rooms are bed-rooms, and into the foulness of a pent-up apartment soon after daylight in a winter morning the poor working-woman must come. I hope to see the day when public sentiment shall make this Pro- tective Union so strong that its sanitary committee can control all this, and make it more than an employer dare do to imitate the horrors of " the middle passage" right here in the heart of the commercial metropolis of Christendom. 4. The Association presented to you to-night is protective to working-women against impositions and frauds. Unless you have looked into this matter you have little idea of the extent to which women suffer from the brutality and dishonesty of men. Let me tell you some of the prices paid in this city by the most reputable houses for woman's work. For making a blue cotton shirt she is paid six cents, and she finds her own thread ! For a dozen heavy "overalls" for men, sixty-two cents ; for a linen coat, fifteen cents ; for flannel shirts, a dollar a dozen. There is a widow with four chil- dren to support who embroiders infants' cloaks for a large estab- lishment in Broadway. Each of these garments requires two weeks of incessant toil to complete it, and is sold in the store at which it is made for from $50 to $75, while the poor woman whose skillful hands fashioned the dainty garment receives $4 50 for the labor of a fortnight. And through those two weeks her children, in their thin clothes, sit shivering by and gazing at the magnificent cloak that is to keep your child warm. And for this work the mother FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 257 has thirty-two cents a day. She cannot find a room to hold the five which does not cost her at least fifteen cents a day, and her fuel and her light, and food for five persons, must be procured with the seven- teen cents that are left ! O think of it, think of it, ye favored women of my congregation ! Some of you in your luxurious homes have murmured to me of your lot, and before some of you who have been so distressed at losses of thousands while thousands still remain there are sitting other sisters who have been all this long winter working at these starvation prices. " You would not do it ! " What would you do ? Refuse the work ? The reply of your employer would be — heartless but truthful — that, " If you do not choose to do the work there are thousands who will jump at it." But the low pay is not the worst of it. If these working-women could only be sure that, after the work is done, they will be treated fairly and paid promptly, they might make some calculation. But hear what has happened. A girl went to an employer. She was compelled to have work, starve, or do worse. The bargain was made. It was at such figures as barely covered the absolute expense of mere existence in the lowest way known to the most impoverished portion of our society. At the end of the week she called for her pay. The work had been properly done. There was no complaint. But her employer paid her only a portion ; was a little straitened that week ; would pay all the next week. What could she do ? There was no way to compel payment before she left the house. The amount kept back would have just about paid her lodging. To quarrel with her employer would be to lose her place, and to lose also what he owed her. The resort was to pawn some article of her limited wardrobe and pay her lodgings. The second week this was repeated, and began to be exasperating. But how could she collect it? How force him to pay? She had no friends. Her Hibernian landlady was put off with some trouble, after uttering a few words most hard to bear. And so it went on until it was absolutely necessary to have the money or not return to her lodgings and to the few poor clothes which constituted her whole earthly store. Then desperation made her positive and peremptory ; whereupon her employer flew into a 17 258 CHIPS AND CHUNKS passion and drove her from the house without her pay. In such a case what could she do ? Or what is that working-woman to do who found an employer willing to pay her higher wages than usual, but demanded a deposit in advance and then refused to pay her for her work, pretending that it was badly done, and drove her off without her pay and with- out her deposit? Or what was that girl to do who, being in the employment of a man, found a situation where her pay would be greater, and whose application for payment when she was about to leave so enraged her employer that he kicked her down stairs ? Or what were they to do — those poor victims of one of their own sex — the notorious Sophia Myers, who was sent to the penitentiary for six months for swindling sewing-girls? All these facts and figures and questions point to the work of the Protective Union. It has before it a great work; and young as it is, and little as public attention has been called to its operations, it has already achieved noble things. It is worth putting on record the statement that during the last year 3,379 were supplied with work, and although from the great competition of thousands of applicants the prices are miserably small, yet it saved them from starvation. They comprised women and girls of all nationalities, religions and conditions, regardless of origin or color. Of these 442 were widows, 495 soldiers' widows, 134 soldiers' wives, 585 orphans, 592 half-orphans, 651 girls with parents, 431 women with husbands; 49 were homeless, friendless girls, thrown upon their own resources and the charities of the world. For such, in Christ's dear name, and in the name of the sweet charity of his religion, I make my plea. I plead with you by your sense of right, by your chivalry, by your highest manhood, by all the regards you bear the sex your mother bore, the sex to which the Christ of God was ever gentlest and most tender, by all your wishes to purify society, to bring social harmony, and to save souls from destruction. I plead with the beaux, the philosophers, the working-men, the Christians of this congregation. Gentlemen, if you should see a woman on a furious horse dashing toward a prec- ipice it would be the first impulse of your manhood to spring toward the steed and attempt to save its rider. Toward that precipice FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 259 down which, when women go, not one in a hundred ever comes back, are thousands of women in this city driving to night. There are 40,000 women in this city to-night between whom and starva- tion or crime stands only the work they may be able to procure. A very small number make any thing above a respectable support, not many make even a respectable livelihood ; the large majority are barely able to procure the absolute necessaries of life. They have not a dime on Monday morning. Upon some of them depends a crippled father or bed-ridden mother, or little brother or sister. Some of them are from the country, lured by the promises of work by parties who plotted their ruin. Many of them are saintly pure, and some of them are grandly lofty in thought and purpose and spirit. But life, gentlemen, is very, very sweet, even to women. It must be very hard to go five days without food, tramping the streets for work all day and sleeping in a station-house at night. When faint and sinking the tempter comes. O have mercy upon these women ! Save them — just to live is all they ask, and for that and their chastity they are willing to pay a day's full work every day in every week. Will you crowd over the precipices the wretched women who are clinging for life ? And I plead with you, sisters of the workers, to have mercy upon them and give help. See that when you are wearing laces and em- broidered dresses, and all those elegancies which make you look so charming, there are no drops of tears and heart's blood visible to the angels and to God, tears and blood for which you may have been rendered responsible by your heartlessness. Help them that are helping your sex. Down with your prejudices ; up with your cour- age. Examine the questions of woman's labor. Help them that are helping women. Help them to seek new and appropriate fields of labor; to appeal to employers to allow better wages, furnish bet- ter work-rooms, and adapt the working-hours to the demands of health ; to secure protection from frauds and impositions ; to secure work for worthy workers, and to create in the community more sym- pathy for the defenseless condition of working-women. The text to-night has served mostly for a motto. But see how Boaz speaks to us down thirty centuries. The Ruth of our age rises up to glean — to glean, gentlemen ; not to plow or sow or reap. She 2 6o CHIPS AND CHUNKS is not a beggar, but a worker. She does not ask all, or even a large part, but the gleanings. O, let us let her glean ! Let us command the "young men" not to "reproach" her, for there is nothing to reproach in what she does. She cannot endure to sit by the road- side as a harlot and carry the wages of sin home to her old mother that she may have food withal. Do not " rebuke " her. The field is wide. The harvest is great. Let us " let fall also some of the handfuls on purpose for her." Nay, gentlemen, if she come close up into our employments, into shop and store and counting-house and office and study, " let her glean even among the sheaves" for she's a good, sweet girl, our modern Ruth, and has an old mother at home. She is just as good as Boaz's Ruth. And that grand old gentleman, O ! how his kindness was repaid ! But I will not sway your Christian charity with thoughts like that. Let us show the world that the Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth post- Christum century is superior to the culture of the fourteenth ante- Christum century, by producing on every street and in every block a Boaz who stops and steps aside from his work to be a protector of the women whose circumstances have thrown them into the field which is to be reaped by us all, not for ourselves, but for the Lord of the harvest. A PLEA FOR SAILORS. [Delivered at the Fortieth Anniversary of the American Seamen's Friend Society, in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church (Rev. Dr. Crosby's), Monday evening, May n, 1868.] After an eloquent speech by the Rev. H. M. Storrs, D.D., on being presented by the President, William A. Booth, Esq., Dr. Deems said : Mr. President : It may be as well to begin my remarks by con- fessing, before our Lord and this large and cultivated congregation of Christians, my own shortcomings of interest and labor in behalf of sailors. In common, it is feared, with many of my brethren in all branches of the Church, I have allowed the multitudes of men who go down to the sea in ships to sail away, so far as I have been concerned, from all notice, all sympathy, all prayer, all effort for their salvation. Lately my mind and heart have been strongly FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 26 1 drawn toward seamen, and I was glad when my friend, your secre- tary, Rev. Dr. Hall, asked me to make a brief appeal in their behalf to-night. The effort may be feeble, but the motive and intent, be assured, are most sincere, hearty, and earnest. 1. In the first place, the number of mariners is so large as to demand attention. It is estimated that there are half a million of American sailors, twice as many British, and of all nations fully three millions of men whose business is in ships and with the sea, actually engaged in the navies and the commercial transports of the world. Three millions of human beings ! three millions of immortal souls ! In the computations of the divine Teacher the loss of one of these souls would not be compensated by the gain of a whole world, and the loss of these millions could not be made good by the gain of all the solar system, with all its worlds and forces and resources. If these three millions of men were smitten instantly from existence by a sudden blow of annihilation, and at that same instant the omnific word of God should speak into existence another system of worlds as high and grand and glorious as this, the universe would not be as rich as it is now. Such is Christ's estimate of a soul's worth. Imagine a city of three millions adult population, all men, in the vigorous use of their powers. What a sight that would be ! What a field for Christian effort ! How philosophy would study the social problems it afforded, and how religion would yearn over that vast mass of humanity ! That all these are scattered over the world does not diminish, but rather vastly increases, their importance. For — 2. Be pleased to consider, that while, to a sailor, his own soul is of no more worth than is the soul of any other man to himself, there may be something in the employments and position of sailors which renders them more important to the world than other men. And there is. The sailorhood of the world is the world's propaganda. Sailors are the circulating medium. They go every- where. They carry every thing, especially themselves, into all parts of the world ; from India to the poles; from the hut where the stunted, blubber- eating Esquimau shivers to the kraal where the naked cannibal sweats. If these men were all confined to a certain limit and the world excluded they could only influence one another. If they 262 CHIPS AND CHUNKS were settled in a certain city they would influence only themselves and those who came to them. But they move. They circulate. They wait not to be visited — they visit. It is unfortunate for an inhab- itant of an inland mountain village to be narrow and sordid and vicious. But, in such a case, the evil does not spread extensively or rapidly. But sailors spread all of wisdom or ignorance, of vice or virtue, which they possess. Fancy these three millions on .an island unvisited by men. A loathsome, contagious disease might invade them. It could spread only to the limit of that population, and its ravages would cease for want of material. They might all die. There the destruction would stop. But fancy every one of those three millions to be infected of the small-pox, and from that island to be transported to every known port of the world and turned loose among the inhabitants. What consternation, what horrors, what destruc- tion would they not propagate among all peoples ! The same holds good of their power and opportunities to propagate the virus of vice. Better have any other three millions of men upon earth weak, ignorant, and wicked, than your three millions of itinerant, restless, irrepressible sailors ! Men that are stationary can do the world little harm until they injure the morals of some man that goes from place to place and touches mankind at many points. 3. Regard the debt of gratitude the world owes its sailors. But for them, to say nothing of peopling our continents and islands, how slow would be the progress of civilization ! Each nation would have to struggle on as best it could, gathering from its own soil what wealth it could, and shaping it as well as practicable, without the benefit of the example, the aid and the stimulus of other nations, and without the products of other lands and without the fabrics produced by other populations. To bring this home to ourselves let us fancy that before to-mor- row morning there should be suddenly taken out of this great city every book, picture, statue, engine, implement, wrought-work of any kind, fine and coarse goods, and every idea and every MAN that have been brought to us from every part of the world during the last quarter of a century ! No ! We are not equal to that fancy. We are not sufficiently conscious of our indebtedness to other lands to paint to ouselves the picture of the emptiness, the disruption, the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 263 desolation there would be. The goods would leave a thousand stores and warehouses bare ; splendid mansions would be dismantled ; manufactories would be silent because the machinery had departed ; 4< the stone would cry out of the wall," FAREWELL ! "and the beam out of the timber would answer it ; " the walls of art galleries and the alcoves of libraries would be stripped of their most precious treasures, and the opera-houses would be hushed, for the singing men and singing women would have flown ; and there would be no display of belles and beaux on Broadway and the Avenue, for she that should put off her silks and laces and fine linens and jewelry after to-night's entertainment would awake in the morning poor " Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square," and absolutely and literally with " nothing to wear ; " and her " nice " young friend, Frederick Augustus Shoddy, whose father grew so rich in the war by cheating the soldiers and swindling the Government that Frederick Augustus has nothing about him that is not foreign, would awake to find his wardrobe suddenly reduced to the summer costume of a Fiji islander ; and the poor drayman's occupation would be gone, and rents would fall, and the Atlantic cable be drowned, and business stagnate, and amid all this new and huge distress all the great and beautiful concepts, ideas, fancies, and thoughts which the artists of foreign lands have sent us would be absent. O I cannot go on ! I do not know what it is the sailors have not brought us. But in so much as we should be impoverished if we should lose all that hath come to us from afar in ships in the last quarter of a century in so much are we the debtors of the sailors of that period. And in the extremest mountain cove of our land it would probably be impossible to find a man who is not debtor to the uncared-for sailor. 4. The sailor is indispensable. That you may feel how true that is, say that from this hour there shall be no more sailors. Disband the whole marine force of the world. Ships would rot in the docks, the products of the earth would rot on distant plantations, seaports would be emptied, for men would fly for food, all city property would become worthless, all city heat and intensity which stimulate the mental activity of the world would be gone. Paris must be as far from us, for all uses, as any city that may exist in the planet Uranus. 264 CHIPS AND CHUNKS We should know nothing of what the other peoples of the world were thinking and doing, and they would lose all the power and vitality with which this young nation is vivifying the race and the century. You should have no more foreign books, pictures, statues, preachers, lecturers, singers, machinery, materials, and ideas. You could send nothing abroad, not even your invalid daughter for her health and your gifted artist boy for his culture. Your coasting would all be done away, and even your home products would become more difficult of transportation. Science would have a vast domain of observation cut away. Your planet would be reduced to the continent you inhabit. The shrinkage would be sudden and pro- digious. You can do well enough without your soldier, the epauletted and strutting " fuss and feathers," the costliest piece of worthlessness modern civilization insanely maintains and idolizes. But you cannot do without your sailor. If there had been no cannon or sword, no general or private, no army or armor in any part of the globe during the past century, who does not believe that the world would have been happier? But would it have been happier if there had been no ship, no sailor, no white sails on the seas and no smoke-track across the ocean? And yet you parade your soldiers, and remem- ber them, and pay them well, and give them honors, and erect mon- uments to them when they are dead. Did they ever dare more than the sailor ? Is the picket outpost more dangerous than the yard-arm in a heavy sea? Did you feel the force of the stanza which you sung a few moments ago ? " How little know ye, who are peacefully sleeping On beds of repose, unawakened and warm, The woes of the sailor, his dreary watch keeping, Amid all the horrors of midnight and storm." Think of his strange and lonely and unappreciated life ! Think of the arctic colds that benumb him and the tropic suns that scorch him! Think of his battle with the fierce storms, when seas come down upon his ship with the impetuosity of a cavalry charge and a thunder like the crash of artillery ! And his battles are fought without the stimulus of drum and trumpet and wheeling squadrons, and the loud shout of men and the prancing of the snorting war- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 265 steeds, and all the kindling electricity of a thousand eyes that flash the same fire as his and witness his deeds of daring. They are performed in the solitude of mid-ocean ; they are achieved unap- plauded in the heart of unsympathetic darkness. Through all the night he is straining every faculty and power that is in him to bring your child and my wife and thousands of treasure safe to port ; and in the night he may be swept from the deck or fall from the yard-arm amid the howl of a tempest that drowns his death-scream, and it was only a sailor lost ! No chronicles, no poets for him, no orators, no monument ! Why, there is probably not a month in which six hundred sailors do not dare all that the British Light Brigade did at Balaklava. Of sailors as of soldiers it is true : " Theirs not to reason why, Theirs not to make reply, Theirs but to do and die." And when, in the awful emergencies of ocean life which have overtaken them among icebergs or the cyclone, Billows " to right of them," Billows "to left of them," Billows " in front of them " Volleyed and thundered." Midst storm "like shot and shell Boldly they " sailed " and well, Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell," Many a " Six Hundred." If they had been soldiers a laureate would have sung their praises ; but, being only sailors, no one sings : "Honor the brave and bold ; Long shall the tale be told — Yes, when our babes are old — How they sailed onward." Alas ! shall it always be true that men are most ungrateful to their greatest benefactors ? Or is it that the sailor is such a creditor that we have no power sufficient to comprehend the debt, and reserve our gratitude for benefactions that are sufficiently small to be ap- preciable ? 5. When the gentleman whom we shall probably agree to pro- nounce the chief of the men of science America has produced proj- 266 CHIPS AND CHUNKS cctcd " the wind and current charts," they were placed in the hands of every navigator who would take them, so that the obser- vations of as many persons as possible, at as many times as possi- ble, and in as many places as possible might be discussed, so that the results might be presented in charts " for the improvement of commerce and navigation." The value of this plan attracted more and more attention, until in a few years the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Denmark, Bel- gium, Portugal, Spain, Prussia, Sardinia, the Pontifical States, the free city of Hamburg, the republics of Bremen and Chili, and the empires of Austria and Brazil were all co-operating on the same plan of observation. Lieutenant Maury well says : " Rarely before has there been such a sublime spectacle pre- sented to the scientific world — all nations agreeing to unite and co- operate in carrying out one system of philosophical research with regard to the sea. Though they may be enemies in all else here they are to be friends. Every ship that navigates the high seas with these charts and blank abstract logs on board may henceforth be regarded as a floating observatory, a temple of science. The in- struments used by every co-operating vessel are to be compared with standards that are common to all ; so that an observation that is made anywhere and in any ship may be referred to and compared with all similar observations by all other ships in all parts of the world." Dear Christian brethren, is not this a profound and sublime lesson for us ? Suppose we could make all the sailors of Chris- tendom real workers for Christ, how soon the world would be re- generated ! Will the world ever be Christianized while our sailors are so neglected ? We can never forget the exciting words of the prophet Isaiah (lx., 4, 5), in which he addresses the Church : u Then shalt thou see and brighten up, and thy heart shall throb and swell because the abundance (or multitude) of the sea shall be converted unto thee, and the forces of the Gentiles (or the nations) shall come unto thee!' Look at the comparatively feeble results of modern mis- sionary effort. Why is it ? Why, brethren, so long as we attempt to Christianize a foreign continent or island of the sea by sending over a ship containing two missionaries, twenty hogsheads of New FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 267 England rum, and a crew of profane, drunken, licentious sailors, we never shall Christianize those people. While the two missiona- ries are learning the rudiments of the language the sailors will have made such an impression of Christianity upon the natives as a generation of preachers cannot erase. No, my brethren ; we cannot have the world won to Jesus while our sailors belong to the service of Satan. To the end that they be enlisted for Christ the energies of Christendom must be turned to the conversion of its sailors. Do you not believe that if every man that left every port were truly, simply, earnestly, a real servant of Jesus, a witness for Christ, an example of the power of Christian principles upon human character, you would have little need of missionary societies? These marine missionaries would set the continents and kingdoms and islands of the world on fire at their edges, and the breath of the Spirit of God would blow the sacred flames inward until the glow and brightness of that conflagration should consume the corruption of the world and fill the heavens with the light of its glory. I do believe that the words of Isaiah were spoken in logical order as well as in poetic splendor. I do believe that the forces of the Gentiles shall not come to our Zion until first the abundance of the sea be converted to her. Let us turn our powers, our energies, our will, our faith, our love, our prayers, toward these too-long neglected men ; let us enlist them for truth and the Lord's Church, and then, instead of the stillness which is upon the nations and the feeble echoes which come to us from abroad, we shall be able to shout what it were false to sing to-night: " Hark ! the song of jubilee Loud as mighty thunders roar, Or the fullness of the sea When it breaks upon the shore ; Hallelujah ! for the Lord God Omnipotent doth reign ; Hallelujah ! let the word Echo round the earth and main." 2 68 CHIPS AND CHUNKS THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. [The Forty-fourth Anniversary of the American Tract Society was held in the Madison Square Pres«= byterian Church, Rev. Dr: Adams, pastor, on Tuesday, the nth of May, 1869. The right Rev. Bishop Mcllvane presided. On the topic of Union Colportage in the South, the Rev. Dr. Deems, on a signal from the venerable Bishop, arose and said :] I must be allowed, Mr. President, to follow the example of Dr. Adams, Dr. Schenck, and Dr. Prime, and intimate that I have been called to speak upon this topic by the officers of this Society, and am not a volunteer. And I rejoice in the opportunity to express my pleasure at learning that of the agencies of the American Tract Society that at the South is the very largest. The great liberality of the Society toward that section of our country is to be justified and still greater liberality urged on grounds some of which I shall attempt briefly to indicate : I. The general present impoverished condition and the prospect- ive great wealth of that land. There is no way of bringing to the mind of a people who have not been desolated by a war the inde- scribable poverty of the people of the South when our war closed. One must have been of them, with all his interests involved in the individual and general interests of the people, to know how grind- ing is the poverty which follows a general state of wealth or com- fort. Then the total derangement of business, the compulsion to make all their fresh business connections with those with whom they had been at war, the immense change in the department of labor, bringing on a condition of affairs with which no one had ever been familiar, must, in the nature of things, cause, and, for a season, continue, a state of poverty. In such a case men will not buy books, certainly not religious books. And yet they need the instruction and consolation of religious books all the more in their depression. The charitable element of this Society would, therefore, impel it to deal liberally with what is now the poorest and must become the richest portion of our great common country. Out of their great trial of affliction the Southern people are to rise to greatest wealth. The climate, the soil, the staple products, are such that men with the American blood in them cannot live there and not grow rich. Give those people three successive crops of cotton like the last, and the wealth of the gold of the land must gravitate toward their pockets. Clothes are an important element of civilization. Who FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 269 walks the grand docks of Liverpool, or the almost palatial factories of New England, or the thronged levees of New Orleans, without feeling that, whether he likes it or not, whether labor be white or black, bond or free, " Cotton is king," and the throne of the ma- terial king of civilization of the world is in the Southern States of America. Before the people of the South become rich again — and who can imagine their vast wealth a half-century to come ? — my own soul is most anxious that all the appliances of religious cult- ure be afforded them. 2. Another ground is the total, violent, and sudden revolution of society in the South. One effect of that has been the shaking of men's faith. When men, rightly or wrongly, have honestly and re- ligiously espoused a cause with all their hearts, and made it their supreme cause, giving up their time, their property, their brains, their children, their lives to it, and there comes a failure, the first feeling is that all the courses of nature are out of joint and justice has clean fled the universe of God. That was the case of the people of the South when the war closed. On one hand the infi- delity was appalling, on the other the apathy was disheartening. Now, God be thanked, a re-action has commenced. The self-deny- ing labors of the ministers of all Churches have been an argument on the other side. The sufferings of the people have begun to bear fruit unto holiness. A learned and distinguished Southern Bishop informed me last week that he had just closed a long and laborious tour of preaching, and that from all over that land there came ex- pressions of desire to hear the word of God preached. When God turns up the soil by any plow-share many a flower perishes, but a place is made for the sowing of the seed of truth. It is just the time, and the people are in just the condition, to have a great cir- culation of such books as bring the realities of the spiritual and eternal world down among the gross cares and bitter sufferings of the people. There has not been time, nor have the people had the means since the war, to organize any proper or effective school system. The children are left without books. I shall never forget the delight in the eyes of some children, who had learned to read after the blockade had been established, when, at the cessation of hostilities, they had 270 CHIPS AND CHUNKS spread before them a few volumes of the Tract Society's publica- tions, printed with fair type on brilliantly white paper, and illus- trated with what seemed to them transcendently splendid pictures. To this day in very many sections such books would be received with childish rapture. In those sections the word of God is as yet seldom preached. The books of this Society would be district school, Sunday-school, and Church, to thousands of these lambs of Christ's flock. The report of your Society shows that much has been done, and fifty years from now these children will be the nabobs of America. The South has come North in the last few years begging. I venture to predict that in fifty years the whole state of affairs will be changed, and the South will mainly support the country. If we were not stimulated by the lofty charity of our holy faith commercial sagacity should teach the American Tract Society, and every other society that calls itself " American," to befriend in their poverty those who, when they come to their estate, are to be their chief supporters and friends. And then there are our new fellow-citizens, the freedmen, so-called, who have immense claims upon every Christian man, North and South. No matter whether we like it or dislike it, they are citizens, and have all the rights 3.nd pozvers of citizens ; and self- preservation should teach us to have every power duly regulated. They must be religiously educated. That was important when they were slaves ; it is indispensable now that they are citizens. Every right-minded man in the South feels and acknowledges that. And it is not literary and political instruction they so much need as moral culture ; having which they will attain as much of the mental training as they are capable of receiving — a proposition which I be- lieve to be as true of negroes as of white people. Many of the books of the American Tract Society are such as would captivate these new citizens and lay broad foundations for their future up- building. Before emancipation hundreds of ministers of the Gos- pel devoted themselves to labors among the colored people ; the heads of thousands of families every week, many every day, read and expounded the word of God to their servants. Larger sums of money were spent upon their religious instruction than the Chris- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 2 ?I tian world generally knows. But now their former friends are too poor to help them. They are an orphaned people ; how orphaned only those know who have seen them before and since. They need the care of all good men ; and with all their faults, when we con- sider how the people of that race have conducted themselves under all the trying circumstances of war and change from slavery to widest freedom, I venture to say that they deserve very considerate treatment. In any event it is the duty of every Christian organiza- tion to give them such help as shall keep them from becoming an ulcer in the body of the Commonwealth. 3. Lastly, the Tract Society has a ground of liberality toward the South occupied by every wise and good man and every truly Christian association at the North. It is found in the need that exists to heal the sores of the country. We never can re- construct by laws and conventions. Kindness is the cement of hearts. His Christianity teaches every good man at the South to do every kind thing he possibly can for every Northern man, good or bad, first, because he has been his enemy, and, second, because only thus can a genuine reconciliation take place. The very same reasons should still more strongly influence every Northern man and every Northern society, because the people of the South are the con- quered party and are suffering from defeat. We must not argue over the question. It must not be reviewed. It does not matter just now who was right and who was wrong: both are dreadfully hurt and must be healed. Let us get well, and then for the logic of the case. And for these wounds there are no balms like the oil of good deeds and kindnesses. Mr. President, it was my fortune to be in the Confederacy through the whole conflict. When the clash of arms ceased I fell imme- diately to the w r ork of reconstructing the churches in my district in Eastern Carolina. I reached the town of Beaufort in my tour, and the next morning at the breakfast-table of the boarding-house I sat beside a courteous gentleman whom I was not long in discovering to be the Rev. Dr. Stevenson, one of the Secretaries of the Ameri- can Tract Society ; and when I learned the object of his coming my heart warmed toward the good man and toward the Society. He was the first dove with an olive-branch that seemed to me to 2 ; 2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS come back from over the waters of the destructive deluge. By my feelings then in that little southern seaport I know in this great city now, right reverend sir, that our duty is to cultivate loving- ness, to prove that Christian love is stronger than sectional hate, and that there is no skill in politics nor sagacity in philosophy like the simple power of loving hearts. On these grounds, Mr. President, I rejoice in all the American Tract Society has done in the South, and urge that still more be done, in the hope and belief that thus you will vindicate your claim to being an American society and constitute yourselves another bond which shall hold together these great States. They cannot be bound together by any laws or compacts, for they are freemen and American, but they can be held together by the almighty cohesion of love. Thus God rules the universe, and thus all who are wise will seek to influence their fellow-men. I would have all men feel the force of the truth of the saying in the great speech of the Spanish orator Castelar, recently delivered in the Cortes : " The religion of power is great, but the religion of love is greater." AN ADDRESS Delivered at unveiling of a monument to the unknown Confederate dead, Hopkinsville, Ky., May 19, 1887 : Fellow-Citizens : An occasion like this may become a mere spectacular exhibition, or be made an event of fruitful importance. If we merely look at this great throng of human beings, in which are so many fair women and brave men, and at the noble shaft erected by one of Kentucky's gallant sons* to the memory of his unknown departed comrades, and at the ceremonials which have been arranged to cel- ebrate a deed which unites munificence to patriotism, the whole affair will soon melt away like the vanishing magnificence and beauties of a mirage. I venture to say that I know our friend who causes this monument to be erected, and I know him too well to believe that his is a nature to be moved to such an act by the child- * John C Latham, Esq., of New York. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 273 ish fancy of making a mere pageant in his native town. He could not have desired me to come away from the important and sacred duties of my post in a city fifteen hundred miles distant simply to be another voice added to the uproar. No, fellow-citizens ; if our acts and words this day do not connect the things of this present with those of the future, which will be another present when we have all passed away, we may have a day of talk and parade, but it will be a barren day — a thing human life is too precious to afford. Fellow-citizens, there are many of us who remember when a war was rag-ino- in this land. It was a terrible conflict. It tore families asunder and arrayed brothers in hostility. It snapped the cord which had held States together for more than half a century. It plowed the land as if it would tear up every root which could ever produce flowers or fruits. But all things that begin must end. That storm of war was at last exhausted, but after the winds ceased blowing the waves for a season kept rolling, and even now there is a slight movement on the surface. So great is the force of habit that we occasionally hear the phrase " the late war." Now, fellow- citizens, let us think a little. There has been no " late war " in this country. Have you heard of any battle in the last twenty years? I have not. The latest firing I heard was in the noble old State of North Carolina, which did not come into the Union until months after George Washington's inauguration as President, and being last to come in at first, was last to go out when the break came, and the first to come back at the last. Yes, I heard those final firings of the war — and all the male children who were born that day in Caro- lina and Kentucky had the right to vote at the late presidential and gubernatorial elections! Now I ask whether, in view of that single fact, we old men at least should not drop the misleading phrase, " the late war." There has been no late war. Since hostilities ceased nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed. Two thirds of the time allotted to a human generation surely should be sufficient to build men's fortunes from the foundation, and to rebuild fortunes that had been cut down. Have not the best things men have done been accomplished in twenty years? The men, North and South, who have not been able to reconstruct their affairs into a reasonable form of prosperity, would they be able to do so if they had centuries ? 18 274 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Let us, then, cease from all unavailing regrets for the irrevocable past and address ourselves manfully to the practical present and the possible future. One of the most fruitful sources of human unhappiness is found in our failure to adjust ourselves to the inevitable and irreversible laws of the universe. Sometimes this is done from want of will, and sometimes from want of thought. Has not time enough elapsed to allow us to think without passion on what the dominant causes of the war were, and what will finally be the outcome ? I think we may, especially here on this border-ground, and more especially here beside the quiet dead, whose memory we can never let die. Our admiration for their heroism, our reverence for their martyr- dom, and our tenderness for their memory will all be increased by such a study. And all the more may we do this because the monument we un- veil to-day has been erected to the Unknown Confederate Dead. If it were to a single Confederate dead hero — to St. Stonewall Jack- son, to Sir Albert Sydney Johnston, or to that other, that greatest American since Washington, that man who, amid reverses, outgrew all titles of honor invented in Church and State, that man of whom the muse of history now thinks, and will hereafter speak, as simple Robert E. Lee — if it were to any one of these this monument were unveiled to-day the greatness of the individual might draw our at- tention from the cause he represented to himself, as some bright particular star draws our eyes to its own brilliancy and away from the great expanse in which it moves and shines. We are submitted to the power of no such abstraction to-day. The men to whose glory this column is to stand are men whose names are so lost in the cause they represent that not only have they no such tombstone distinction as is enjoyed by those who lie where the forefathers of their hamlet sleep, but are men of whom all trace is lost, even the initials of their names. It has been suggested that it is appropriate to have an address on this occasion from the pastor of the Church of the Strangers. Here are the bodies of more than one hundred men. These men were strangers in this place ; not one of them when alive was known to a single inhabitant of Hopkinsville, and not one of them FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 275 when dead could be designated by any mark that should distinguish him from any of his comrades. Strangers to one another, coming from different States, and many of them from different denomina- tions of Christians, united only by their ardent love for a common cause and by their rest at last in a common grave, it is meet and right that the pastor of the Church of the Strangers should speak a word for his poor, mute parishioners whom even the baptism of blood has left unnamed. It is an unnatural thing for a man to die of violence, away from home, and where strangers give a grave to eyes that had no friendly hand to draw down those curtains that shall rise no more upon the sights of land or sea or sky. It is a most unnatural thing when multitudes of men so perish. What led to the war that swept the men of the two opposing armies away like autumn leaves? Will the final outcome of the conflict repay the immense outlay ? Let us calmly consider these two questions. Lifting ourselves for a little season away from our own land and our own times we may see that through the history of our race there runs a purpose which is worked upon a plan. Only dimly in the ages have the poets, the seers, the prophets detected either plan or purpose ; but now we " doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." It was the failure to detect that divine purpose, that sublime plan, which for centuries allowed the vast energies of our humanity to be expended 'along narrow lines and in small fields. It was this igno- rance which allowed even great souls — souls grown too great for personal selfishness — to find relief in what they believed to be un- selfishness ; namely, in national and ecclesiastical selfishness. Thus it has come to pass that many a man, whose heart was a fountain sending forth a stream too ample to be contained in the little pond of his own personal selfishness, has found larger outlet and a larger lake in the sickly sectarianism of conflicting churches and the pinched patriotism of national animosities. It was on account of this that, from the times of our old Hebrew and Homeric 2 ;6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS predecessors down to our own times, the face of our planet has been striped " With the standards of the people plunging through the thunder-storm." It was in the midst of this debasing process, and at a time when, so far from advancing from a brute to a savage and from a savage to a saint, man had sunk to his lowest point and had concluded the demonstration of the survival of the most unfit possible, that the world saw in human shape one who claimed to be the Prince of Peace ; one who taught that Jew should love Samaritan, and Carthaginian should love Roman, and every patriot should love his national enemy. The world of his time could not know him. He was not a world product. He came by no evolution. But never since he came has the world ceased to feel him. Science and philosophy, examining him by eighteen century tests, now unite in declaring him the result of extra-human processes. And yet, even after his advent, the din of war had gone on until, in this nineteenth century, the spirit of that young Galilean poet- preacher-martyr, brooding over the people, began to make them have a dim perception of what at last looked like a heavenly picture to the eyes of a poet of our own day, who gazed and listened "Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." This is not the dream of a sickly sentimentalist ; it is the vision seen only when a man is beating his most healthy soul-pulses. It is the goal to which every army corps of humanity is tending march how it will — with lightest steps or heaviest tread, at double-quick or loitering between many a shorter or longer halt. " The Federation of the World." Why, fellow-citizens, those five words sketch the everlasting plan of the Infinite Architect for building the vast and splendid structure of humanity which he means to stand on infinity and oversplendor the cycles of eternity, and which he means to inhabit — because he is too great a God to dwell in temples made with hands, and even God must have some home! Now, fellow-citizens, we begin to see that for the great world- consummation there must be preparatory studies. There were FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 277 none before American history opened, if you do not count a single premature abortive suggestion of an attempt among the Greeks. The god-great idea to be realized is the complex thought of things ivortliy of union worthily united. This divine thought is shown else- where in nature. It shines in marriage. Ravening beasts may herd together ; but their nature is too base for marriage. Innocent birds are permitted to build and coo and to mate and feed their birdlings; but their nature is too weak for wedlock. Even bad men and bad women can find no initiation into the most sacred mysteries of connubial love. So all these live apart, even though they stay in the same lair, or nest, or house, while those, and only those, whom God has joined together can no man put asunder. The same principle prevails in the growth of civic life. There must be States before there can be United States. A State is not a herd, a multitude, a mob — it is a community in which true individ- ual liberty is secured by common law maintained and administrated against that licentiousness which is liberty's most virulent enemy. On this continent providentially the complex problem is getting itself worked out for the benefit of the whole world. There were, first of all, communities brought from different localities, having had different antecedents. These had time to consolidate into States. Nearness suggests union. So also does a common interest. We are soon brought to the question how far this can extend. The student of the philosophy of history has seen nothing more clearly demonstrated than the impractibility of a universal empire. From the earliest times, from the days of the builders on the plains of Shinar, and the age of the Macedonian conquerors, to the uprising of Napoleon, men have had dreams of an empire which should be co-extensive with the planet. Every effort to compass so grand a design has been abortive. It has not been, it is not now, it is prob- ably never to be, that one government shall embrace and control all the dwellers on the face of the earth. But from the beginnings of history in America there has been the prediction of a union of self-governing States covering the continent. All men see that so great is the extent of territory and so diversified the climatic influences even in North America alone, that if it were suddenly populated by a homogeneous people two' centuries would 278 CHIPS AND CHUNKS work such changes that the dwellers beside the St. Lawrence would be greatly differentiated from the cultivators of the delta of the Mississippi. The same is true of South America, of Europe, of Africa, and Asia, considering each by itself alone. The problem to be solved is the formation of a government elastic enough to suit all sections and strong enough to hold all together for the needed co-operation and progress. Let any man now calmly study our antecedents, and he must see, we think, that not an empire, not an autocracy, not a limited mon- archy, would realize this great ideal, but States united, not welded but fluent, each as perfectly free for discharging the functions of statedom by securing the liberties and promoting the progress of its people as if it were the only State upon the globe, while it was so bound to all the other States upon the continent that they could not exist without her nor she without them. Plainly this great ideal is not to be realized by one generation, but by many. All the experiments of peace and war must be tried before this great result can be reached. It is quite easy to perceive how there might be many who would see more clearly the value of the union than that of constitutional liberty, and how there might be others in whose eyes the union of States would be to the liberty of States as the casket is to the crown jewel it contains, or the human body to its spiritual inhabitant. It seems to me, fellow-citizens, that here was the source of our difficulties and the real cause of the civil war which raged a quarter of a century ago. Nor do I see how that war could have been avoided ; therefore I cannot conclude that it was useless, although it slew my boy, my first-born. Wherefore I come to-day, in the presence of these dead men, men who died and got no human glory by the dying, to ask you and myself whether the outcome is to repay the country and the world for the immense and precious outlay. Watching the progress of events since the war closed, and more and more dispassionately studying the problem, I am prepared to answer, " Verily, I believe it will." The men who fought the battles, the privates, the rank and file — of whom one hundred and one are sleeping near this stately monu- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 279 men t — and those who fought against them who have been carried for their last repose to the cemetery at Fort Donelson, were martyrs, every born American of them, and we have no right to say they were not sincere and honest as we know they were self-sacri- ficing martyrs. That certainly must be the opinion of our friend whose design was to erect this monument to the Unknown Dead of both sides. They bore witness to a truth, each side to a truth. Fellow-citizens, when shall we rise above the low thought that always when two men fight each other they are probably both wrong or that one certainly is wrong? That is not true. We do not need the fable of the two knights drawing swords in deadly con- flict on the question of the color of a shield, and finding, after their fight, that both were right — since the shield was blue, as one affirmed, and white, as the other contended. A shield that has two sides may have two colors, and be at once both white and blue. If men should go to war because one part maintained that our planet is held to its orbit by centripetal, while the other contended that it is held by centrifugal force, would they not each be wrong, while both were right ? So it seems to me it was in our civil war. It would be an error to suppose that the people of the South hated the Union. So far is that from being true that one of the causes of the temporary animosity of multitudes of Southerners to the North was because they believed that the North was pursuing a course which would destroy the Union, knowing themselves to be so devoted to con- stitutional liberty that they would not remain, unless compelled, in any union in which that was not paramount. It would be equally erroneous to suppose that the people of the North were indifferent to constitutional liberty. One of the causes of their hatred of the South was the belief that the South was about to destroy what seemed to them the only hope for constitutional liberty in this land. And so both sides appealed to arms, and through four years of bitterness and blackness a war was waged on a prodigious scale. It ended with what contribution to civilization? This: the world's treasury of heroism and martyrdom was enriched by the warriors on both sides. Each section regards the other this day as a 280 CHIPS AND CHUNKS grander people than any other on the face of the globe, and each strives to surpass the other in devout loyalty to the Union. We have learned, and we have taught the world, that the Union is absolutely worthless except as a preserver of liberty, and that the liberty of the States cannot be preserved without the union of the States. These two propositions embrace the most important and the most lofty political generalization reached by human science. What powerful things are words ! There is something — there is much — in names. To me it seems most fortunate that our forefathers baptized our country "The United States." They gave it a name in which is packed all that is most precious in political philosophy. If we had been called Columbia or Washingtonia, or any such name, the progress of the world would have been retarded for centuries. " Liberty and Union," said Daniel Webster ; but that was shown to be impracticable, and then a war was waged which changed Webster's phrase slightly in verbiage but immensely in sense, so that our national motto henceforth must be, " Liberty in Union," now and forever. The thunder and lightning of our war, fellow-citizens, attracted the attention of the civilized world. Men every-where have been studying it. We have proved ourselves capable of being the be- ginning of the " federation of the world." We have made it possible for Englishmen every-where to agitate and discuss the question of a federation of those States which have been gradually forming under the aegis of Great Britain. We can begin to hope that, following such imperial British federation, some day, it may be a far day, but some day, the world will look upon United States of Europe. And while that is coming there will be States growing in Asia and in Africa. When they shall reach political marriageable age there will be United States on each continent, and after that the day of days will dawn, the day on which, in some earth metropolis, shall be opened the first session of the " Parlia- ment of Man." To that august consummation the greatest contribution ever made since the world began came from the two imposing armies of our civil war. And as houses, cities, States, institutions of all FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 28 1 kinds among men have always owed very much more to men whose names have been lost than to those whose names have been pre- served, so to the unknown Federal and Confederate dead the world will always be a greater debtor than to Grant, to Sherman, and to Meade, or to those other three great generals, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sydney Johnston. And you, O, my silent brothers, sleeping unnamed in this quiet tomb, under this noble monument, you fought a good fight for something much more precious than any treasured thought of yours, and quite as sacred as your altars and your fires ; you fought for all the altars worth erecting anywhere, and for all the fires worth kin- dling in any age ; you fought for that which makes the mortal life of man a worthy vestibule to human immortality. And our friend who hath caused this beautiful monument to rise on this fair spot, it seems to me, has " builded better than he knew." He has ex- pressed his own manly sense of manliness and gallant sense of gallantry, and said that the names of heroes may become unknown but heroism shall not go unacknowledged among men. He has done more. In days to come, when he and you and I shall be in the camps where these departed soldiers have pitched their tents, groups of boys shall stand before this monument and study its pro- portions and read its eloquent inscription, and ponder its meaning, and gather from their older friends its deeper lessons. As they learn that men were ready to leave venerable fathers and mothers, beautiful sisters and sweethearts, dearest children and wives, to abandon trades and fields, to forsake the paths of social dalliance and delights, and endure the hardships of camps, hospitals, and of battle-fields, and to die at last, not only unsung but unnamed, and to do all this because fair Liberty is so beautiful and so sweet ; as they learn this those boys will grow into men not all unworthy to be successors of the blessed dead. Fellow-citizens, we are favored to-day. We have lived to see the animosities of the war die out, to witness famous generals of both armies marching side by side in the processions of peace, to behold Confederate leaders mourning at the death of generals of the Federal armies, and great captains who led the Union forces sorrowfully placing chaplets on the graves of their great opponents. The blood 282 CHIPS AND CHUNKS of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and the blood of the patriots is the seed of the State. Cold though those blood-seed lie, Through winter long and drear, They do not wholly die ; They surely re-appear. They spring again to make the land rich and beautiful with those flowers and fruits which they contained. And now, fellow-citizens, this day we do two things. We erect a monument to the memory of one past generation and open a school of patriotism for the culture of heroism in many a generation to come. A beauty and a benediction, child of patriotic gratitude, parent of heroism, long stand John Campbell Latham's monument to the Unknown Confederate Dead ! Sleep, brothers, sleep, beneath the monument unveiled by the hands of purest little maidens, whose souls were still with God when your souls went back to him ! Stand, shaft of beauty, stand ! Come from the heart of New England to rest on the bosom of the South, thou hast shot up into the midday beneath a heaven deeper and more beautiful than Italian skies, and from beneath the stars and stripes of the one flag of our one country! Wave, banner, wave ! " When Freedom, from her mountain height, Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle bearer down And gave into his mighty hand Thy symbol of her chosen land. Forever float that standard sheet ! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet " — And the flag of our Union streaming o'er us ! FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 283 CHIPS FROM A LECTURER'S WORKSHOP. [In this department are inserted a few things which seem to promise to have more than an ephemeral interest.] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES. According to announcement, Professor Huxley arrived in America and on the night of September 18, 1875, at Chickering Hall, de- livered the first of his series of lectures on the " Evidences of Evo- lution." This was followed by two others during the same week. Interest in the subject drew some, interest in the lecturer drew more, and these united with a general curiosity to furnish the pro- fessor with a large and attentive audience. In personal appearance we found his face like his portraits, his shoulders bent as by the posture of a worker at the desk, and his hair slightly sprinkled with silver. He made almost no gestures. He rested with both elbows on the desk and bore his whole weight upon it, so that in the act of speaking he created an accompaniment by the creaking of the pulpit. His voice is of small compass but quite pleasant, his intonations free from that intolerable affectation which so many Englishmen have inherited from their fathers, who copied the elocutionary vices of the " First Gentleman in Europe." The professor seemed to use no notes, his language appeared extempore, yet the sentences were generally elegant, and, in many instances, admirably wrought, and as ready for the press as patient study could have made them. His style is singularly lucid, and large parts of the lectures were delivered as by a man in close but not laborious thought talking to himself, or, with closed qyqs, dic- tating to an amanuensis. He is the Moody of science, and visited America on an evangelical excursion in behalf of the new gospel of evolution. What has been the result of his tour? So far as we can perceive, only this : that very many persons have had the gratification of hearing a distinguished man speak. He has shaken the faith of no one, he has confirmed the faith of no one. 284 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Those who believe with him believed as much before as since his advent. Christian people have been in no manner moved. In regard to religious thinkers, it may be just as well to say here that their religion has nothing at all at stake in the settlement of this question. St. John can very readily be conceived as an evolu- tionist. Evolution, as Professor Huxley taught, demands a begin- ning, and stands as much as any other system in opposition to the hypothesis of the eternity of man. There was a beginning. John says, " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." Evolution merely pushes the date of "the beginning" back into a period no more indefinite than that assumed in any part of the Bible. Whatever may have been the beginning of the beginning, all beginnings require a beginner, and whoever that beginner is is God, whatever have been the processes through which that change was first begun, which has continued to grow until it has flowered out into the present condition of things. So far as a Christian man is concerned, he can join that same Apostle John in saying, " Be- loved, now are we the sons of God." It is quite possible to be a Christian and adopt the hypothesis of evolution ; it is quite possible to be a Christian and to reject it ; just as it was as possible to be a Christian when scientific men held the Ptolemaic system of astron- omy as when they substituted the Copernican. Why should it not be so? It is possible to be a scientific man and reject the theory of evolution. Some of the ablest scientists living do so now. It is possible to be a scientific man and accept the hypothesis, because evidently Professor Huxley, who is a scientific man, is an evolu- tionist. It is purely a question of intellectual interest. Our own opinion is that if the body of thinkers now living were empaneled as a jury, and forced to an immediate decision, they would render the Scotch verdict, " Not proven." * That does not, however, imply that proof shall not come in hereafter. This court must sit always open, and witnesses may at any time be sworn. No man, so far as we know, has the slightest religious interest in having the hypothesis established or exploded. To us, then, it seemed gratuitous, not to say, impertinent, in * This afterward became the title of a tractate republished in this volume, p. 75, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 285 Professor Huxley to go out of his way to offend people who did him the honor to pay profound attention to the delivery of his lectures, and who spent five dollars for the prvilege, but who still hold to those faiths which are clung to by the greatest scientists of the present age, as well as the past ages, and by the great multitude of the best living men and women on earth. If he will only prove evolution to be true we shall all gladly receive it ; but if he utterly fail, as he did most conspicuously in his recent course of lectures in New York, to furnish any proof of this hypothesis, these thinkers are not to be converted by a sneer, nor are they to have their respect increased for Professor Huxley by a quibble. The professor set forth in the beginning that, in this matter, there were three hypotheses, and only three : So far as I know there are only three views — three hypotheses — which ever have been entertained, or which well can be entertained, respecting the past history of nature. Upon the first of these the assumption is that the order of nature which now obtains has always obtained ; in other words, that the present course of nature, the present order of things, has existed from all eternity. The second hypothesis is that the present state of things, the present order of nature, has had only a limited duration, and that at some period in the past the state of things which we now know — substantially, though not, of course, in all its details, the state of things which we now know— arose and came into existence without any precedent similar condition from which it could have proceeded. The third hypothesis also assumes that the present order of nature has had but a limited duration, but it supposes that the present order of things proceeded by a natural process from an antecedent order, and that from another antecedent order,«and so on ; and that on this hy- pothesis the attempt to fix any limit at which we could assign the commencement of this series of changes is given up. This was an astounding acknowledgment of ignorance. Did Pro- fessor Huxley never hear of a fourth hypothesis? Where has he lived, to have grown up to half a century in age and not learned that some of the ablest university professors and Christian teachers distinctly hold a fourth hypothesis? If the professor was sincere he does not know enough of the history of thought to lecture. If he was not sincere he was behaving superciliously toward those scientific men who are at least his equals. The first of these hypotheses he named was of course quickly dispatched. No one now has any interest in it. When he came to state the second hypothesis he took the whole audience by sur- 286 CHIPS AND CHUNKS prise by saying, " that is the doctrine which you will find stated most fully and clearly in the immortal poem of John Milton's English Divina Commedia" He made no allusion to the Bible. He gave his countrymen the credit of discovering and originating the second hypothesis, namely, that of creation, and the great apostle of evolu- tion crosses three thousand miles of ocean to knock an English poet's fancies of the cosmos on the head ! Perhaps Professor Hux- ley will never know how much and how rapidly he sank in the estimation of thoughtful people who had entertained admiration for him. Either John Milton's account of the creation is identical with that of the Bible or it is not. If it is not, the attitude of Pro- fessor Huxley, in ignoring a fourth hypothesis, is simply ridiculous. If it is, the making of John Milton solely and solitarily responsible for the present prevalent belief in the origin of the cosmos, when it had existed, as the world knows, over three thousand years in the most ancient writings in any literature, looks to us like " an artful dodge," indicative of cowardice. Now we do not believe Professor Huxley to be a coward, and, therefore, we heard these words of his with real sorrow. It was a great mistake. But if he does believe that Milton's poem is a fair statement of biblical cosmogony he cannot set it aside lightly. President Dawson, of Montreal, is Mr. Huxley's equal as a scientific man, and so is Professor Gray, of Harvard, and so is Professor Guyot, of Princeton, and so is Pro- fessor Winchell, of Vanderbilt ; and all these, his compeers, have contributed as much to the advancement of science and are as well acquainted with the latest developments of science as Professor Huxley ; and they all believe that nothing yet settled in science goes toward unsettling the account given in Genesis. The professor then took up the evolution hypothesis, which he stated thus : Evolution supposes that at any given period in the past we should meet with a state of things more or less similar to the present, but less similar in pro- portion as we go back in time ; that the physical form of the earth could be traced back in this way to a condition in which its parts were separated, as little more than a nebulous cloud making part of a whole in which we find the sun and the other planetary bodies also resolved ; and that if we traced back the animal world and the vegetable world we should find, preceding what now exists, animals and plants not identical with them, but like them, only increasing their differences as we go back in time, and at the same time FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 287 becoming simpler and simpler, until finally we should arrive at that gelatinous mass which, so far as our present knowledge goes, is the common foundation of life. In examining the three hypotheses the professor insisted that the question is simply a question of fact ; historical fact. " The universe came into existence somehow, and the question is whether it came into existence in one fashion or another." The evidence as to the existence of any fact is one of two kinds, which he distinguished as " testimonial evidence" and " circumstantial evidence." He pro- tested against the acceptance of testimonial evidence, by which he stated that he meant " human testimony." Of course no human being was present at the beginning, and as there was a beginning, then one of three things must be true : first, we must learn how the universe began from what the universe presents to the inspection of our own senses ; or, secondly, we must depend upon revelation from Him who created it in the beginning ; or else, thirdly, we must remain forever in total ignorance of the origin of things. Perhaps the universe does not contain within itself any thing out of which the logical understanding of man can work out an intelligent theory of the creation. Who is there to assure us that we are absolutely bound down to one class of witnesses ? Suppose the geologist shall tell us that we must not listen to the astronomer, or the astronomer that we must not listen to the geologist, in taking evidence on this question. Who shall decide between these two ? Is it not think- able that the universe may have been by a great first intellectual omnipotent Cause called into existence and shaped in such a fashion as to make it impossible for any finite intellect to read the story of the beginning from the runic characters on stone or the illuminated missals in the skies ? Who shall bind us to a verdict founded upon evidence purely metaphysical, or evidence purely physical, or upon both combined? Now, perhaps, science has nothing to do with the question of the beginning, as toward the close of his lectures Pro- fessor Huxley seemed to feel. If not, then it cannot stand in antagonism to even Milton or Ovid, to say nothing of the book of Genesis. In drawing his distinctions between circumstantial evidence and testimonial evidence, as he calls them, Professor Huxley did not 288 CHIPS AND CHUNKS seem to anticipate that when he came into his third lecture, and brought what he thought was the clinching argument, in what he called a demonstration — but which every candid scientific man who examines it will, we suspect, think proved an utter failure as a demonstration — that that so-called demonstration would rest, for that entire audience, totally and wholly upon the testimonial evi- dence which he had charged us to discard, Professor Huxley says that he saw certain fossils in the hands of Professor Marsh. Now, to give any weight at all to his concluding argument, we were com- pelled to believe that he stated exactly what he saw. Supposing that he told the truth, and we do not insinuate to the contrary, we could only believe that he reported what he thought he had seen. He, for his part, was compelled to receive the human testimony of Professor Marsh, and, from the well-known character of that gentle- man, no one blames Professor Huxley for believing him. But who else knows these facts ? Further, who knows but that Professor Huxley and Professor Marsh may have been played upon — as upon scientific men tricks, it is said, have been played before ? If any man re-state to us the history of the obtaining of these fossils, all we can say is, certainly this rests upon the testimony of Professor Marsh. Then, when Professor Huxley is called up, there are three things to be taken into consideration. In the first place, what did really Professor Huxley see, when he says he saw certain fossils ? Did he make no mistake ? Were the six defects in human vision, which Helmholtz has shown to exist ordinarily in man, absent from the eyes of Professor Huxley when he was at Yale College? Then supposing that Professor Huxley delivers accurate reports to us of his perceptions, and fairly reports to us his reasoning thereupon, the entire argument of his whole series of lectures, so far as the audience was concerned, depended wholly upon testi- monial evidence. If, then, we obey his injunction in the first lecture, that " in dealing with these questions we should be indiffer- ent to all a priori considerations," and reject testimonial evidence, we must be indifferent to Professor Huxley's lectures, and entirely reject the professor's conclusions. Mark, we are not trying him by our standard, but by one erected by himself. He has established this measure for others ; he must submit to be bound by it himself. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 289 In general terms, the reception of scientific conditions must rest as much upon human testimony as the reception of the Bible. If Professor Huxley had remembered that there were in his audience scores of people who knew the history of geology it might have caused him to hesitate before making a fling at the biblical scholars who have rendered different readings of the Hebrew text. His sneer at the marvelous flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse interpretations brought from the audience the laughter and applause which any simple exhibition of stump oratory would have elicited. But while they laughed they remembered the marvelous flexibility of the rocks, and not a few of them knew that they were able to show more various readings rendered by geologists of the text of the earth's structure than by scholars of the Hebrew text of the first chapter of Genesis. But his audience could not anticipate that at the very conclusion of his third lecture the professor himself must afford a most remark- able example of double-action reversible geological treatment. In one part of his lecture his assumption was that the present forms of animal life were not simply developed from antecedent forms, but that this development was probably evidence of evolution. He spoke of the chalk deposits in the bottom of the ocean. Now, taking the time of their formation as a starting-point, and reasoning therefrom to the time it must have required for the geological formations now known to us, and taking what little we have been able to learn of development, and reasoning therefrom by Professor Huxley's own method to the probable time required for evolution, it must have been a vastly longer time than that required for de- velopment, and millions of millions of years would be very little time. As he was about to take his seat it seemed to occur to him that there would be people in his audience of sufficient intelligence to know that astronomers and physicists had shown that the con- dition of the earth was such that neither horse nor orohippus could have existed at the time when his theory demanded animal life on earth ; whereupon the professor made an extraordinary somersault, by saying that the biologist knows nothing whatever of the amount of time which may have been required for the present evolution. " I have not the slightest means of guessing whether it took a mill- 19 290 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ion of years, or ten millions of years, or a hundred millions of years, or a thousand millions of years to give rise to that series of changes." Yes, but Professor Huxley cannot sweep aside all that men have settled in science in order to make room for his reveries over a fossil or two. His theory demands at least five hundred millions of years. He cannot turn upon his friend, Sir William Thompson, who shows that life could not have existed upon the earth five hundred millions of years ago because the earth would have been too hot. To this he replied (we quote Professor Huxley's own words), "That is not my affair ; settle that with the geologists, and when you settle that between yourselves I will agree with any con- clusion. " Well, the coolness of that is quite refreshing. Suppose, for instance, it could be shown that the doctrine of evolution stands opposed to the facts supposed to be established by the Copernican system of astronomy ; will it do for him to turn to the Herschels and others, and say, " That is not my affair ; settle with yourselves whether the sun goes round the earth, or the earth goes round the sun, and I will agree with any conclusion " ? It is not the Bible which evolution opposes so much as astronomy and geology ; and, for our own part, the last five sentences in his third and concluding lecture were, in point of fact, a surrender, not probably of the theory of evolution, but certainly of the pro- fessor's own argument. If our space allowed we do not think we should find it extremely difficult to meet each particular point in the professor's lectures. He failed utterly to bring forward the slightest logical proof of the probability of evolution beyond that which resides in the single specimen of development which he undertook to show in regard to the horse. Now, supposing every statement of fact which the pro- fessor made to be as accurate as we do him the credit of thinking that he believes it to be, and suppose that the whole argument has the strength which he claims for it, it does not touch the point in question at all. The development and improvement of any one species, any two species, or any thousands of species, or of all the species, does not establish evolution. We must have, not one, but a very great many instances, not of development, but of evolution ; of one species passing into another species ; many instances of the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 29 1 pig tribe passing over into some of the varieties of the ruminants, and vice versa ; lizards becoming crocodiles and crocodiles lizards, snakes crocodiles, and snakes lizards. We understand the professor admits that there is no way of filling " the gaps," as he calls them, between these two, and says, " if then it could be shown that this state of things was from the beginning, and had always existed, it would be fatal to the doctrine of evolution." This is a manifest attempt to shift a responsibility. The professor announced that he would come from Europe to America to demonstrate the truth of evolution, and instead of doing that he challenges some one to show that it is false ! When the professor comes to establish evolution on a basis as solid as the system on which Copernicus has established his hypo- thesis we have a right to demand that he should bring us more instances than one or two things consistent with the possibility of the truth of evolution. He has a plan. He has to make out his case. How does he do it ? He comes into court with three wit- nesses. One is a solitary bird that has teeth set in grooves and another with teeth set in sockets. The second witness is a fossil which seems to show an intermediate form between the crocodile and bird ; and the third, the apparent genealogy of the horse through the pliohippus and protohippus, up to the orohippus ; and this is absolutely all ! And Professor Huxley, after this thorough break-down of his case, could coolly look an intelligent jury in the face and say that the doctrine of evolution at the present time rests upon as exact and secure a foundation as the Copernican theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies ! Why, if a theologian were to announce a new doctrine, and go three thousand miles to prove it, and then produce no more evidence of its truth in the constitution of man, or in outward nature, or in the Bible, than Professor Huxley, with his great abilities and remarkable industry, has been able to bring to the doctrine of evolution, he would be laughed to scorn, not only by the students of natural sciences, but by the scientific students of theology. On as firm a basis as the Copernican system? Why, did the professor really suppose his hearers so ignorant as not to perceive that the admission of what is claimed by the evolutionists demands 292 CHIPS AND CHUNKS a re-examination of the Copernican system ? If evolution be true the Copernican system itself does not rest on any too solid basis — is not nearly as well established as astronomers take it to be. We, for our part, are ready at any time to become evolutionists. We have no prejudice against the hypothesis. We have no dread of its results. We have no religious convictions that would be shocked by it. We have no theological notions which would be upset by it. We are willing to have Professor Huxley prove the hypothesis to us, but we are not willing to admit that we are weak or ignorant enough to yield to such argumentation as he gave us in Chickering Hall ; and we are very happy to state that we have not yet met a single one of his audience who was convinced by the professor's dogmatic assumptions and defective dialectics. The conundrum which is now being discussed is this : Did Americans overestimate the skill of Professor Huxley, or did Pro- fessor Huxley under-estimate the intelligence of the average Amer- ican ? Perhaps both was the case ; but certainly the doctrine of evolution has gained no available ground by the professor's late missionary service. SPONTANEOUS REGENERATION. [It is proper to state that this short article appeared first in Fra?ik Leslie's Sunday Magazine, October, 1878. Professor Drummond's work on The Natural Law in the Spiritual Realm ap- peared in this country in 1882. The germ of that book is in this article, and had I had time I should have endeavored to run it along several lines of thought, as Professor Drummond has. It was original with me and not taken from his book, as my article was printed years before his book appeared. It was just as original with him undoubtedly. I have no reason to believe that he had seen this article when he began his book. A bit of history like this should make men care- ful in regard to charges of plagiarism.] There are some so-called scientists whose intense hatred of the supernatural gives them a disposition to believe in spontaneous generation ; that is to say, it would gratify them to know that there came living things out of inorganic matter ; that somehow that incomprehensible element of life which makes all the difference between an addled egg and a good egg, between an egg that has been cut out of a stone and an egg that had come out of an animal, that that "something" now and then allies itself with inorganic matter without the intervention of a Creator. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 293 The wish is often father to the thought and mother to the state- ment. All through many modern scientific books there is the most reck- less scattering of statements, as if they were facts, which have abso- lutely not the slightest shadow of a foundation in any thing known to truly scientific men. Apart from all religious prejudices — nay, without any pretensions to religion — there are scientific men who are ready to rebuke these unscientific pretenders to science. For instance, one of the most illustrious scientists now living, it would probably be agreed, is Dr. Virchow. The religionists would call him a thoroughly irreligious man, but he rebukes the tyranny of dogmatism which undertakes to master the whole view of nature by the premature generalizing of theoretical combinations. The most desirable thing for the materialistic philosophers to be able to prove is spontaneous generation. Experiment after experi- ment has been tried to show that such a thing really occurred in nature ; and once or twice certain experiments were triumphantly paraded as conclusive of the truth of that theory. And it really seemed as if those experiments had been fairly conducted. But those experiments themselves were subjected to tests of extreme delicacy and fidelity, and were shown to have been conducted under conditions which insured incompleteness. No scientist of any respectability now believes in spontaneous generation. Professors Tyndall and Huxley tell us that there is not a particle of proof of any such thing having* ever occurred. The debt of religion to science is already very great. All true science is strengthening the foundations of Christianity and illumi- nating many of its darkest passages and chambers. The debt of Christianity to real science is hereafter to be immense. One of the doctrines of Christianity is called regeneration. It is announced in the words of the Master, " Ye must be born again." It is taught throughout the New Testament Scriptures that there must be a new nature in man, as new a nature as when vitality — whatever that is — comes to be connected with inorganic matter to produce that living, locomotive thing which we call an animal. This regeneration is absolutely necessary to spiritual life upon earth and everlasting life in heaven. 294 CHIPS AND CHUNKS The point in this doctrine which has made it foolishness to all Greeks and a stumbling-block to all Jews is that the Scriptures teach that there can be no such thing as spontaneous regeneration. Never, without the coming in of some element from without, does the hu- man soul become regenerated. Never, by any changes occurring in itself, by itself, either involuntarily or voluntarily — that is, spontane- ously in the highest sense, does a soul become regenerated. No soul can say to itself, " I will cultivate myself into goodness ; I will change my whole nature ; I will subject myself to all the most refin- ing processes known among men ; I will study and practice ethics ; I will give to the aesthetic part of my nature the most delicate cult- ure by surrounding it with the highest objects of art and indulging it in all the pleasures of the most refined taste, and I will sweeten my manners by commerce with the gentle and the avoidance of all the uncouth." A man may do all that and yet be thoroughly unre- generated. Goethe, in our own century, has done that perhaps more largely than any other man, and under the most favorable circumstances ; yet at the Court of Weimar he lived as thoroughly unregenerate a soul as any that inhabited the body of the most uncultivated peasant in the Black Forest. The fact is that there is no such thing as spontaneous regenera- tion. It is by the will and power of God that a man is regenerated. It is, as the apostle calls it, the regeneration of the Holy Ghost. A soul differs from inorganic matter in this : that it is possessed of will. It can keep out the spiritual life from itself, or it can admit the spiritual life, but it cannot create the spiritual life. It cannot super- induce upon itself the spiritual life. That is of God, and must be as direct an act of his as when he makes vitality enter into or seize upon or clothe itself with some inorganic matter. The apostle likens the regeneration of the soul to the creation of the world, the light shining into the darkness ; and just as that light - shining into the darkness brought cosmos from chaos, so the Spirit of God, shining into a human soul, imparts to that soul the spirit- ual life. The very scientific precision of the term is demonstrated by our science. Generation is the word used when life produces organism FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 295 out of inorganic matter, and regeneration when the Holy Ghost produces a new life in a life which already exists. Why should men of physical science object to the results of sci- ence in another department when every day of our lives the most accurate conclusions in biological science are confirming and illus- trating the most accurate conclusions in theological science? "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST." When certain evolutionists endeavor to bring to the support of their hypothesis the other hypothesis of the " survival of the fittest " they mean by fittest not the fairest, the loveliest, and the best, but "the strongest." They assume, and they may be right, that the strongest is the fittest. But fit means the designedly adapted to an end. That means a designer. The proof of the proposition that " the fittest" survives must always be, so far forth, proof of the ex- istence of a God. Moreover, why not let Christianity have benefit of the hypothe- sis of survival of the fittest ? Whatever Christianity has outlived, or lived down, or absorbed, or held in subjection, or surpassed, must be given up. If there be any thing stronger than Christianity it will override Christianity, however sweet, humane, or divine Chris- tianity may be. Up to date — let us not prophesy — it must be ad- mitted by the candid, the thoughtful, and the observant that just as countries take on Christianity they take on civilization and grow in power and material prosperity ; and just as they lose the salt of Christianity they hasten to decay. On the other side, also, just as people grow in physical and intellectual power they choose Christianity. Up to date, then, Christianity has the scientific claim to pre- eminence. Such gentlemen as Mr. Herbert Spencer need not spoil the sweetness of their philosophic tempers by virulent hatred of Christianity. If any thing stronger comes along Christianity will perish. If it survive it ought to survive ; it has inherent right to survival. What is the use of hating any thing which is 296 CHIPS AND CHUNKS so weak that it must disappear, or so strong that it must be permanent ? But the hatred of Christianity seems to be the sentiment which sustains Mr. H. Spencer in his philosophical studies, while history perpetually announces it the " fittest." It will probably survive. DISCOVERIES. As new generations of students of the Bible arise new statements of old doctrines and new discoveries of truth may be expected. A devout thinker, applying to the Bible the knowledge already ac- quired in various departments and the increasing scientific skill which must come with practice, will discover truths long hidden to the human eye. The same state of things exists in nature. There was a time when the royal heliocentric truth w r as unknown in astronomy, and the imperial law of gravitation not dreamed of among men. In physical science every century brings out from among crowds of conjectures and hypotheses and guesses some real truth which all the subsequent investigations of scientific men go to confirm. We sometimes wonder how so many centuries could have passed and these things have not been discovered. Nevertheless the historical fact is patent. When, therefore, any student brings forward a doctrine not heretofore held by Christians its novelty, while no condemnation, is certainly no objection to it. If the Bible be as much a creation of Almighty God as the physical universe is we must expect that there are embosomed in it truths which not yet have been discovered by man. How stale and flat and unprofitable were scientific study if any one or any ten genera- tions of men could discover, formulate, and s)'stematize all the knowledge of phenomena possible to the mind of man ! Such a state of the case would demonstrate clearly one of two things: either that the human intellect is incapable of progress, or that universal truth lies in a circle so small that its circumference is no larger than the limits of a finite mind. Such a supposition would be greatly discouraging. Would it not be equally so if the Bible were fixed in FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 297 all its teachings, if the plummets of our investigation could drop to the bottom of all its depths, and one generation of thinkers could discover the whole and impart all its possibilities of truth ? And yet that is assumed whenever the question is asked : " If this teach- ing be true how comes it that theologians have never discovered it before?" The Bible is that hemisphere of divine truth which is open to the eye and the telescope of spiritual observers and thinkers. There are in it what appear now to be nebulae, which some more powerful instrument of the future ages shall dissolve into systems. New con- stellations shall come into view ; and as there comes to be an increase of study old errors must drop out, old truths find new ad- justments to the truths freshly discovered, and a man may just as well hope to form a system of theology in any one age which shall be changeless through all coming time as the astronomers of this age may hope to construct a map that shall be changeless for all the students of the heavens from this time forth, down to the night when the last observer among men shall receive, through the tube which he has leveled at the sky, the last rays of stellar light that shall fall on the organ of human vision. Let not, then, a man be set down as a heretic who had discov- ered a new truth. Let not people say : " As great, as wise, as able men as he have lived in previous ages and have never discovered these things, therefore they cannot be true." Let him remember that Plato and Moses and the man of Uz were greater men than any of the Herschels of our modern day, and yet these Herschels know a thousand times as much of physical truth as was revealed to the seers of ancient times. "When a man brings me a new doctrine I have but one question to ask: " Is this contained in and taught by the Bible?" If an affirmative answer be returned to this question then the time of the discovery is of no consequence. The years will come in which the infant of to-day will be counted among the most ancient of man- kind. 298 CHIPS AND CHUNKS TO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION. There is an awful sound in the words of the second commandment, which represents God as visiting " the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate" him. This statement should always be connected with that which immediately follows, " and showing mercy unto thousands (of gen- erations) of them that love " God and " keep " his " command- ments." We are to remember that these two statements were written together, and that they were published thousands of years ago. Were they " mistakes of Moses? " Let us see. Of late years much attention has been paid to heredity. An immense number of facts have been gathered, and certain apparently trustworthy principles have been settled. Among these are (1), that physical and intellectual traits are transmissible ; (2) that they are modified, strengthened, or weakened by circumstances, or, as scientists say, by environment ; and (3) that a vicious heredity, such as the alcoholic heredity, finally causes a family to become extinct. As early as 1781 Erasmus Darwin, in his Botanical Garden, wrote : " It is remarkable that all the diseases from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to the third generation, gradually increasing till the family becomes extinct." Mark that phrase, " unto the third generation." One hundred years after (1886) Dr. Carothers, of Hartford, in a paper on " Inebriety and Heredity," wrote : " In these cases there seems to be in certain families a regular cycle of degenerative dis- eases. Thus, in one generation great eccentricity, genius, and a " high order of emotional development. ... In the next generation, inebriate, feeble-minded, or idiot. In the third generation, paupers, criminals, tramps, epileptics, idiots, insane, consumptives, and inebriates. In the fourth generation they die out, or may swing back to great genius, pioneers, and heroes, or leaders of extreme move- ments." A very great amount of authority could be brought to confirm these statements. It is a very natural question how so early an FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 299 author as the writer of Exodus xx. could know that vicious heredity has a tendency to run down three generations and to become extinct in the fourth. Such knowledge, thousands of years before the possibility of science was ever suspected, is surely remarkable. Another remarkable thing is that, having been so scientifically correct in regard to vicious heredity, the author made no mistake in regard to heredity in general by fixing the limit of all heredity at the fourth generation. All intervening history from the days of Moses to this day confirms the teaching of modern science, that good characteristics may be perpetuated indefinitely, and that is the meaning of " thousands " of generations. Vicious traits may be eliminated. If a man with a vicious tendency struggle against it and strive to live according to God's commandments, and especially if he marry a woman who comes of the seed of the godly, and his off- spring pursue the same course, the power of the evil tendency will be diminished until, in succeeding generations, it shall be destroyed. The man who inherits soundness of body and mind from ancestors who have bequeathed him also a heritage of holy living may expect his line of descendants generally to be rich in good impulses, which will never die out so long as they love God and keep his command- ments, and intermarry with those that do the same. Nor will that family itself become extinct. These transmitted traits secure the perpetuation of the family. Lessons of tremendous responsibility are taught by this law of heredity. No man liveth for himself; he liveth also for his off- spring. A voice from far-down ages calls each man and woman to purity. No man can guiltlessly neglect the environment of his children. If for his personal convenience or comfort or aggrandize- ment he exposes his children to a vicious surrounding, they will absorb evil influences which will create evil traits, and those traits will be transmitted. Every man is bound to examine the antecedents of the woman he is to make his wife. Every woman is bound to make sure of the antecedents of the man who offers himself as her life-mate. Each 3oo CHIPS AND CHUNKS is to calculate the modifying influences of the other on the possible offspring of both. The Bible and Nature unite in teaching us, from the inevitability of heredity, that the power of evil is to power of evil as that of " three or four " to " the thousand." Let no man, therefore, do himself or his heavenly Father the injustice of dwelling with de- spairing emphasis on " visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation," but cheer his heart by the remembrance that to counteract that bitterness is the sweetness of the assurance that the heavenly Father shows " mercy " to any number of" thousands" of generations that love him and keep his commandments. WHAT NEXT ? (t> III. (s) The Family Hearth-Stone ~>^ y^^s&^/^/L^^M^J THE FAMILY HEARTH-STONE, FOR YOUNG WOMEN "WHAT NOW?" [In 1850 the author of this volume became president of a College for Young Ladies at Greensboro, N. C. In 1853 a class of exceptionally bright students came to its final graduation. As a souvenir for the members of the class and as embodying the advice he would fain give to all the pupils passing from under his instruction, he prepared a little book entitled "What Now f" the question which would naturally come to every thoughtful girl upon passing from her academic studies into the world and into what is called " society." The young ladies in the class for which it was first prepared would all pass into homes of comparative ease, where there were servants to do most of the household work. In 1864 the little book fell into the hands of an officer of the American Tract Society, and he proposed such a revision as would adapt the address to young women in narrower circumstances as well as to those of ample means. As re- vised it has since been published by the American Tract Society, 1 50 Nassau Street, New York, where it can be obtained in single copies or in quantities for distribu- tion. It has been found to be a profitable present to young ladies in every station of life and girls just quitting schools.] It is a remark of that keen analyzer of human character and shrewd observer of human manners, John Foster : " I have ob- served that most ladies who have had what is considered as an education have no idea of an education progressive through life. Having attained a certain measure of accomplishment, knowledge, manners, etc., they consider themselves as made up, and so take their station. They are pictures which, being quite finished, are now put in a frame, a gilded one, if possible, and hung up in permanence 304 CHIPS AND CHUNKS of beauty — in permanence, that is to say, till old Time, with his rude and dirty fingers, soil the charming colors." It is to the young ladies who have had "what is considered as an education " that the counsels of this little book are addressed, whether their training has heretofore been conducted in schools or under the guidance of skillful hands at home. In this generation and in this country very many young ladies have had the advan- tage of a regular course in academies and seminaries some of which are so wide in their aims as to take the name of colleges. There are very many young ladies who have had careful instruction in the domestic circle, and have such good minds that some of them sur- pass many who " graduate," as it is called, from the higher schools in the country. It is hoped that both classes will be interested in the sentiments here presented to their consideration. It is quite natural, however, that in addressing educated young ladies about to enter upon the active duties of life, taking a position which causes them to cease to be considered as girls, and ranking them with women, the mind of the writer should turn to those who have passed through school- life ; but there is no suggestion or advice addressed to them which is not believed to be equally profitable to the other class of intelli- gent young ladies. You have gone through the passage of girlhood. You stand be- fore a great door which, not many years ago, seemed to you to be a long way in the distance. Look at it now. It bears an inscription. That inscription is the question, What NOW ? Yes, what now ? Something now, surely. You are not of that class of young ladies described by John Foster as having no idea that education is progressive through life. If so, what a grand mistake you have made ! You have merely begun. The most that any, even the best schools in the country, can do for their pupils is merely to teach them how to educate themselves. They give them the point of departure, the charts, the compass, the instruction in navigation, and launch them upon the sea on which they are to make the voyage of life toward the port of heaven. They must ever be watching the winds, guarding the helm, taking their bear- ings, and making their soundings. But alas ! how many young FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 305 ladies are launched and go a-drifting, helmless and compassless, whithersoever wind and wave may bear them. And how many go down at sea, or wreck on reefs where many a bark lies shattered ! To take up Foster's figure, you have simply chalked on the canvas the outlines of the landscape. The painting is to be a life- long work. You are carefully to mix your colors, study the shades, lay on the pigment, and bring your picture to such perfection that it may be framed in immortality and hung in the grand gallery of eternity. When a nobleman had engaged an artist to execute a masterpiece of sculpture for him he visited the studio after several weeks' absence, and it seemed to him that the artist had made little progress. " What have you been doing ?" said he. " W T orking at this figure." " But I see nothing done beyond what was accom- plished before my last visit." "Why," said the sculptor, " I have developed this muscle, I have modified this portion of the drapery, I have slightly changed this expression of the lip." " But these are trifles." " True, my lord," replied the sculptor; " but perfection is made up of trifles." And so in the development of character. No one can appreciate the hidden labor, the fastidious carefulness, with which you will toil in secret to strengthen some weak point in your character, to bring out some faculty and to educate some power. But the world can appreciate the whole of a nobly-developed character. It is in this as in other things, as in painting, for instance. The picture charms from its vraisemblance, its truth to nature, its soft blending of colors, its harmonious adjustment of features. The beholder is delighted. The slightest disproportion in a figure, the slightest unbalance of light and shade, would break the charm. The beholder could not tell why ; but there would be something wrong. How little can he who walks a gallery of paintings tell of the toil, the study of nature and of the masters, the close devotion to details, the whole week spent on a twig, on a leaf, on a square inch of flame or smoke or foliage ! And so in music. The harmony and the melody are perfect. The orchestra is perfectly cast. The composer and manager have neglected no detail. The instruments are brought to exactest ac- cord. The voices are trained to their best capabilities. The effect 20 3o6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS upon the audience is prodigious. A wrong note, a weak string, a single harsh voice would destroy the effect. But who can estimate the long years of scientific training upon the part of the composer, to enable him to produce a work which accords at once with science and the beatings of ten thousand human hearts? Who can appre- ciate the care with which each member of the orchestra has brought his voice to a perfect consonance with a hundred other voices of different powers ? And so with oratory. The chains of logic are flung round an audience, and the lever of the heart is put into the windlass of the intellect, and the whole mass of human spirits is drawn by the power of a single hand. But who can tell what fields of science and history have been explored, and what hours of careful weigh- ing of arguments, what years of the study of language and voice and of the balance of human passions, what efforts of self-control have marked the history of the orator before he found the capa- bility of seizing and lifting and swaying thousands of human souls. These results occupy small space. The painting is hung, and in one minute its entire effect has entered the mind and enchained it. The key-note is struck, and in ten minutes the crowded concert- room heaves with emotion. The oration begins, and in one hour thousands of hearts have been elevated to the highest region of sentiment or hurried to the verge of the greatest moral or physical daring. But the preparation has been long and laborious — so long and laborious that the producers of effects in these several cases are not aware how much they did before they could do any thing very great. Every object upon which the painter had gazed, every sound of man or bird or instrument to which the composer had listened, every thought, fact, argument, or sentiment which had entered the mind or heart of the orator, had carried on the educa- tion which was necessary to the production of his masterpiece. You must not, therefore, ever think that your work is entirely done. You must not regard any thing as a trifle which will help you to produce the grand effect of life. No moment of time is contemptible, no book, no acquaintance, no conversation. They all modify, all educate. The seal will make its exact likeness on the wax. Every line, how minute soever, will leave its counterpart FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 307 on the plastic material. You are to stamp your character's image upon the world and upon your eternity. Your doom beyond the grave will answer to your character as the alio of the wax answers to the basso of the seal. The result is worth the effort. Whatever may have been the pre- vious toil, anxiety, and care of the painter, the musician, and the orator, the hour when hundreds and thousands are standing with rapt delight before the almost speaking canvas, or palpitating with rapture, or melting with emotion under the ravishing strain of the music, or surrendering themselves to the magic power of eloquence, is a reward to each amply repaying all outlay of time or thought or care. The hour of victory is worth the year's toilsome campaign. And so will it be with you. Whatever you may do toward educat- ing yourself, there will come times of trial in which, if you are pre- pared for its emergencies, you will find every power taxed but every labor rewarded. There will then be no regrets over privation and study and care. If now you really feel the truth of the statement that your education is not finished, and that you are to work at it as long as you live, you may be willing to heed a few suggestions of practical importance. You have just quit school, not " finished," as the phrase of the ignorant fashionable world has it ; on the contrary, unfinished, very much so indeed ; but superior to badly-taught girls in this— that you feel how very unfinished you are, while they, pretty simpletons, go forth to simper bald sentiment and lisp bad French in circles as silly as themselves, to distress their parents, to coquette with their lovers, to ruin their husbands, and to be mothers of children who shall inherit their own weaknesses and superficiality. They are sur- prised at the question, What NOW? "What now? Indeed! I thought I had done !" You are not so. You stand not at the gate of entrance, but at the portal of departure. You go forth to do something, something greatly worth the doing. Make a Review. First of all, make a review. What have you done? How far are you educated ? What portion of your character have you neglected ? Wherein are you weakest ? To what extent are you able to bear 308 CHIPS AND CHUNKS burdens, to deny self, to go forward alone, to help those upon whom you may lean or those who may lean upon you ? Take time to do this calmly. You will have the warm and cordial greetings of many true friends and the complimentary greetings of many hollow fashionable acquaintances. When this shall have passed, go into yourself and ask : " What do all these expect of me now ? — my parents and brothers and sisters, and the domestics, and my circle of relatives, and my pastor, and his neighborhood, and my acquaint- ances?" Many will expect nothing. They never think of their claims upon you or your claims upon them, or the momentous re- sponsibilities of human existence. But some will think, and they will observe you, and they will judge your parents, your teachers, and yourselves, by the views which they perceive you take of life and its complicated relationships. If they discover that you think the whole of education lies in the little curriculum of studies em- braced in the plan of any seminary now existing they will know at once that your mind is too narrow to take in the great circle of human duty. Remember also, young friend, that up to the time you left school your education was making progress under very different influences from those which will hereafter attend it. In school every thing calculated to interrupt you was excluded. Self-cultivation by direct effort was secured. But these efforts were not unaided. Your course was marked out for you. You have never had to spend a moment's thought upon what text-books should next be studied. You had them furnished to your hands. In mastering them you had the daily aid of those who had gone carefully and repeatedly over those studies, having for themselves had the advantage of ex- cellent instruction. And when your teachers reached you they brought to your aid all the experience in explaining and enforcing which they had gathered from years of labor spent on the culture of other pupils. This assistance has been most material. There will come another most perceptible difference. In schools and seminaries you have had the stimulus ministered by the literary society, by the presence of books and constant on-going of study all around you. You have been in classes. You have been cheered by literary companionship. An emulation has been generated, and FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 309 when you otherwise would have flagged the energy and persever- ance of some room-mate or class-mate has renerved you to your labors. You have been traveling in a crowd of gay companions, with now and then a halting-time and a season of festive refreshment and a girding up again, as at the close and opening of school sessions. Now you must go alone. You must select your own books and methods of study. You must be your .own teacher. You must study without the excitement of knowing that the recitation-hour will soon arrive and that your reputation with those whose opin- ions you respect may be forfeited by an hour's idleness. You have no rivalry in study now. Coolly, and from high principle and a feeling of the necessity of so doing, must you give yourself up to the work of carrying forward your intellectual and moral training. The props fall from around you. If you have the strength you are expected to have at the close of your school-days you will stand and grow ; if not, you will droop and dwindle and die. Very many young ladies regard every school regulation as a re- straint necessary only for childhood ; and when they are making an estimate of the delightfulness of entering upon womanhood, to all the caresses of friends, and flatteries of admirers, and brilliance of fetes, they add the casting off of this odious confinement. Well, the truth is that you are not to be in precisely the same kind of restraint, nor the same amount; but unless you have learned to bear the absence from society necessary to intellectual culture so as to preserve a measure of it, your mental growth has nearly come to an end. If you have dwelt upon your departure from school as setting you free from tasks, from early rising, from habits of in- vestigation ; if you expect to sleep in the morning as long as sloth soothes, and to rise with listlessness, and droop through the day with no excitement except the thoughts of the style of dress you shall wear to the next party of pleasure, your education has not been even respectably begun. Future Culture. Now you must unite in yourself the double character of teacher and pupil. The reputation you have won at school has been simply as a learner. You are henceforth to achieve a double reputa- 310 CHIPS AND CHUNKS tion. You are to teach yourself. You will occasionally review your old studies, for they are the roots of all the growth in the wide and flourishing forest of science and literature. But you must push your studies beyond, and you must keep up with advancing science and literature. " Reading makes a full man," says Lord Bacon. You must read. You will read. The habits already formed will lead you to this. The danger is that you may read the wrong kind of books, or read the right kind improperly. Upon these points a few suggestions are affectionately addressed to your understanding. 1. Be content not to read everything. You cannot go over the whole field. Make a selection. Not because it is a book has a volume claims upon you. You would not allow every kind of man to talk to you for hours. Be as choice of books ; for books are men's minds made portable. As there are so many good books in each department of learning, and whereas your time is short, select the very best. 2. Be sure that you never read a sentence in a book which you would not be pleased to have your father or your brother know to be engaging your attention. Never read a book which you must peruse in secret. 3. Beware of new books. Let them take their place in society before you admit them to your library. They will do you as much good five years hence as now, and then those assayers of books, the critics, will have passed them through the fire, and the great public of reading persons, often forming a safer tribunal for the trial of books than even the critics, will have stamped the mark of an ap- proximated true valuation. There are enough books which have survived three generations to engage your attention while the books published this year will be running the gauntlet. 4. Beware of books with colored paper covers, the cheap thin issues of a depraved press, the anonymous novellettes and tales and stories. Better never read than peruse such trash as these con- tain. Be sure that the man who wrote the book you are reading is really a great man in his department. Do not be ashamed of being ignorant of the productions of the modern, flippant, bizarre writ- ers, while you are unfamiliar with Milton and Shakespeare, Spenser FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 3U and Ben Jonson, the men that "built the lofty rhyme," and the grand old fathers of our noble English tongue. If you read the modern books of such men as Macaulay, and Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt, read with them the older and the greater men to whom they make constant reference, and from whose " well of English unde- fined " they draw the water sparkling in their shallower channels. 5. Make yourself a small good library to begin on. Let it em- brace the works of a very few of the greatest poets, the greatest historians, the greatest essayists, the greatest metaphysicians, and the greatest religious writers in the language. Of course THE Bible will lie at the foundation of your studies. These, with a very few books in each of those departments of physical science with which a woman should be acquainted, and the best dictionary of the language, and, if practicable, an encyclopedia, will make you such a beginning as will give strength and breadth and consistency to your self-culture. If you have been studying other languages let the same rigid rule be applied to the literature of those languages. The careful reading of one book will show you what you further need in that department, and so you will pass over the field of English literature ; omitting much, but, short as life is, and many as may be your cares, you will doubtless by perseverance obtain all that is necessary. 6. You will also have your periodicals. Few things produce superficiality more than a promiscuous reading of our current periodicals. You will have two selections to make — one from the mass of such publications soliciting your attention, and another — ■ from those which you take — the articles proper to be read. It is one of the necessities of successful editing of our monthly maga- zines that so much useless matter must be introduced to make them popular enough to render them profitable to their proprietors. There is no monthly magazine in existence, with which I am ac- quainted, which should be read in all its articles by an intellectual young lady seeking a high and large cultivation of mind. Your own judgment must guide you in this. A very few of the best monthlies and quarterlies should be suffered to enter our families, and from these a young lady of refinement may select, perhaps, all the light reading necessary to mental recreation. It is painful to 312 CHIPS AND CHUNKS observe how low the standard of mind among our ladies is, judging from the contents of the most popular magazines for ladies. In your measure do what you can to correct this evil by laboring to enlarge in your sex the class of more elevated readers. The material being gathered, how to build is another very grave question, upon which the limits we now assign ourselves will allow only a few suggestions. 1. Read slowly. If physical dyspepsia is caused as much by rapid eating as by a multifarious diet, so may an intellectual dys- pepsia be superinduced by bolting your mental food. The books you read are the pabulum of your mind. You eat to live, not live to eat ; so you must read to live, not live to read. It is not the amount read which will furnish your mind, but the quality and mode of reading. No reading will profit which is not mixed with thought, and you cannot think of that which is rapidly passing before your eyes. 2. Therefore read thoughtfully. Stop your author and catechize him. See if his testimony be reliable. Compare him with himself, Let him not speak and run from you. Seize him and hold him until you have gathered from him all that he has to give. You will wish to make use of your reading. To that end it must be re- membered. Memory depends upon attention. Attention requires time and thought. It is said of Edmund Burke that he had a great memory of what he read. Some one has recorded of him that he read every book as though it were the only copy in ex- istence, as though he were allowed only one reading of its pages, and as though each sentence contained what was to be of daily, and everlasting, and immense importance to him. No wonder that he garnered his learning so well. I have observed among the pupils of our schools two classes of memory. There are those whose minds seem like pasteboard spread with fluid gum, to which all gnats, all down, all atoms drifting in the atmosphere adhere. They are as easily rubbed off by any rough hand. I have seen others laboring long with apparently little advancement. But they were planting thoughts like trees, which, the longer they remained in the soil of the mind, although that soil might be coarse and rocky, were striking their roots deeper, and spreading their branches, and FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 313 making themselves ready to produce annual fruits. So let it be with your reading. The memory of words may not be so im- portant, but if the thought be great, and the sentiment be just, it should be incorporated with your mental constitution, not laid on like a robe for a temporary display on a certain occasion, to be thereafter flung off and forgotten, but taken into the very heart of your intellect and passed into the circulation of your mind's blood. 3. Read topically. When you strike a rich vein run it through your whole library. You will thus be able to bring to your mind all the best that has been said upon a given subject by a variety of minds. You will often find it well, for instance, when studying a certain portion of history, to examine and compare the biographies of the principal actors in that particular age, and then see them grouped by a few master hands. Occasionally our poets and other word-painters give you aid by their analysis of character, and fix correct views of character by striking imagery and well-wrought story. 4. Read for use, and use what you read. There is such a thing as intellectual wine. You may perpetually be stimulating your mind with intoxicating reading. The reaction must be mental de- pression, and the longer the stimulus be kept on, and the longer the return to a natural healthful state be postponed, the deeper will be the depression and the more weakened will be the intellect when it wakes up from this unhealthful dreaming. There are those who are thus driven again and again to the stimulant until a mental delirium tremens sets in on them or they are reduced to a driveling idiocy. Beware of this kind of reading. Read for strength, for growth, for use. Review your mental states while reading. Ask yourself again and again, How am I to use this? What does this illustrate or prove? How am I to connect this with what I already know ? Where shall I place it in my mind to be ready to draw upon at the needful time ? Napoleon said he had his mind arranged like a bureau with drawers, so that he could open one and study what it contained, shut it up and read another without mingling the contents. How different this from many minds which seem to find their best representation in a lumber- garret or old curiosity-shop! 3I4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS In all your reading, dear young friend, ask yourself, How shall I answer for this at the judgment-seat of Christ? To him you must give an account. The precious hours spent over tawdry stories if given to devout reading and study would fit you for greater useful- ness upon earth and aid your preparation for heaven. Your Field. The question, "What now ? " recurs. Why have you spent years away from home, after having spent years at home, in the study of books of human learning? Why this costly labor, this large outlay of money, strength, and time? Have you ever asked yourself this question seriously? Is all this rearing of schools and colleges, these collections of accomplished teachers, this expenditure of time and intellect merely for a show, for a variety in the phases of life ? Is there nothing substantial to come as the result of it? What now? You leave school. Is all done ? Verily, it were sad to think that all the difference between educated and uneducated young ladies should be in the fact that the former can utter a few phrases in for- eign idioms, thrum a few tunes on a musical instrument, or paint a few square feet of canvas. If this be all the difference education is a hoax, and the time spent on it wasted. But you know that there is a high and great difference. You are to go forth to great usefulness, to do much good, to do much more than the uneducated. If you do not exert a more powerful and healthful influence upon society than those who have not had your advantages you will do the great mischief of bringing contempt upon education, especially upon the education of your sex. The men around you will be confirmed in that low prejudice that it is useless to labor for the high cultivation of female intellect, and thus you will lower your sex in the estimation of the world and paralyze efforts which, if successful, will give the advantages of wholesome learning to many young ladies who will make proper use of it. Remember, then, that the interests of your sex are, in a large meas- ure, in your hands. Young men, as they close their collegiate career, begin to calculate upon the professions they shall enter. Young ladies cannot do pre- cisely as they, and therefore often think they have nothing to do. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 315 They go home and wait to be married. They marry just because it is usual for young ladies to marry, and that is as far as they look ; as far as they care. What a mistake ! Every woman should feel that her profession is to do good, in beautiful ways becoming her womanly nature. If you, my friend, have proper views of your place in society and your responsibility to God, you will go forth to use all your present knowledge to bless those around you, and go forth gathering that you may scatter again. Is your field of usefulness small? You will allow one whose respect for you imparts the disposition rather to lead you in the path of duty than through amusing speculations or fanciful scenes, to survey with you the field upon which you must now enter, and if possible point out methods in which you can fulfill your engage- ments to society and to God. Home Duties. The first who have claims upon you are your parents. Under God they gave you being. When you were utterly helpless they sustained you. They have provided for you all the helps you have had in the cultivation of your intellect. They submitted to the pain of being separated from you through those years when you would have been very interesting to them. Almost immediately after the troublesome period of infancy and childhood, just as you were beginning to be self-reliant, as your mind had expanded suf- ficiently to make you a companion for them, they endured the pain of parting, solely for your good. They knew also that all the months of your society they lost were hurrying you on to that period when other love would take the precedence of theirs ; that love which draws young ladies from the home-nest to other shelter and other society. Yet, with a parent's unselfish love, they gave you up for your own benefit. Now, then, when you return to them, until the time shall come when he shall appear who is to abstract you from parental embraces to try with him life's ruder labors and more rugged paths, let every day be filled with the gentlest, sweetest, most daughterly attentions to your father and mother. Father and mother! Perhaps there is only one now; the other may have gone. Your father sits in a lonely house. The friend 3i6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS of his youth, who in early days entered with him into love's yoke- fellowship, your mother, has gone away from his side to return no more. With what solicitous expectancy has he been endeavoring to hurry the slow hours of his desolateness to the time when your return to the homestead shall gladden his heart by a thousand little winning attentions, reminding him of your mother's first devotion ! To take that mother's place is no small honor and no small labor. Or, it may be that your mother lives — lives to feel how bereft a widow is when her stay has been struck from beneath her ; and it may be she has denied herself many a comfort and studied a tighter economy to purchase for you the intellectual furniture wherewith your life is to be adorned. How many a close calculation of means may she have made, how many a night lain down with an aching head because she could not see how she was to provide from her scanty income for all the mouths at home and have sufficient sur- plus to keep you amid all the advantages of a high seminary of learning ! And since your father died, and upon her has devolved the work of looking after many a thing which does not usually fall to woman's sphere, it may be that she feels how much of practical training was omitted in her education, and seen at length the folly of having wasted so many of her school-hours. This may be the secret of many a passage in her letters which you thought rather gratuitous and as reflecting upon your habits of industry. Lay them to heart. Go home to help and cheer her. Let the harvest of her tears come quickly and richly in your abundant cheerfulness in doing any thing a daughter ought to do for a widowed mother ; watch and anticipate her wants and desires, add no feather's weight to her burdens, but be hands and feet and wings to your mother. Both parents may be living, living in abundance, well-educated themselves, moving in a high social circle, to which you are to be admitted and where you are to sustain the reputation of the family. In that circle you may do much good if to a trained mind you have added the traces of a genuine, hearty piety. Carry thither the wis- dom which cometh down from above, and the Lord will make you fruitful in all good works. Your parents may not have had your advantages. In good cir- cumstances, having obtained a fortune which has placed them in FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 317 positions to make them feel the need of an education, they early determined that you should never endure all the mortifications to which their want of culture has subjected them; and for this reason they have freely spent their means to educate you. Or, having natural talents, and lacking both the full purse and the accomplishments of education, they have practiced a joint econ- omy and invested the whole of their annual savings in your education. They expect you to return to them to be the light of the little home-circle and adorn their latter days, and by your superior educa- tion to be able to make such social alliances as shall advance you. Are they to be disappointed? Nay, verily. Lay not up for your- self hours of remorseful self-reproach, when you shall have blasted their hopes and hastened their departure from you. If at any time you perceive the superiority which your training and associations have given you, as you value the respect of the good, as you place any estimate upon the invaluable treasure of a permanent self- respect, never for a moment, by deed or word or look, betray a dis- dainful sense of their inferiority. When you take the hard hand of that kind father in yours remember that the fruits of the toil which hardened those hands were not expended upon his own pleasures, but upon your education ; and remember that while you were shel- tered and quiet, turning your books, dancing your snowy hands over the keys or strings of musical instruments, that mother was in employments that browned her complexion but robed her daugh- ter in the dresses which fitted her to mingle with the refined. If there be of unholy pride a more disgusting exhibition than any other it is the disdain with which some girls who have received a little smattering of school-learning affect to look down upon their plain mothers. My young friend, be not so. The truly refined and well-bred will despise you if they see such exhibitions in you ; and you can never by such pride lift yourself from being still that mother's daughter. I have no kind of respect for the pretension to education which some young ladies make who are willing to sit in parlor and drawing-room working beautiful embroidery, thrumming the piano, or sighing over novels, while their mothers are in the nursery, the laundry, or the kitchen, toiling amid domestic work 3 i8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS which must be done if the family be comfortable. Heaven have mercy upon the wretched man who, for his sins, may be made the husband of such a heartless young person ! If I were advising a young gentleman in search of a wife I should carefully direct him to ascertain how the young lady treats her parents, especially her mother. A young lady who, not habitually, but once a month or once a year — I had almost written once in her whole life — ventures to speak unkindly, impertinently, or unfeelingly to her mother will almost certainly plant her husband's pillow with thorns. In all my observations in families I have carefully noticed this, and never yet have seen a girl tenderly solicitous of her mother and attentive to her wishes and desires who did not make a wife to be honored and loved ; and I never knew an unfilial girl that did not become a heartless wife and an unhappy mother, if God called her to those positions. It may be that you have had no aid from your parents. Rich or poor, they have never felt the duty of educating you. But, smitten with the love of learning, you have had the enterprise to adopt and prosecute your own plans, and now you go back to them. If prop- erly trained, how radiant will be your mind in that untutored house- hold ! You will not seek to overwhelm your parents with the terms of art and science which you have acquired. No ; such pedantry would di'sfigure your intercourse with them and create stronger prejudices against education. Your well-trained faculties will carry you with such graceful ease round the whole circle of filial duty that they will be as conscious as you are unconscious of the new strength which has fallen upon you. In any case, you are to return to your parents wiser, better, stronger than you came away. And if you have neither father nor mother, strive to fill their places in society and shed a pure light of honor on the memory of the departed. Brothers and Sisters. What NOW? That is the importunate question of your heart. And perhaps at home there are several young hearts beating with the same anxious question. The younger brothers and sisters are looking for your return with no small amount of solicitude. " Will sister be changed any ? " " I wonder if she will talk as she used to FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 319 do?" " She has been with so many fine young ladies I'm afraid I shall not know how to behave when she comes." " But won't she tell us a sight of things ! " These and a hundred similar questions and exclamations are made, in the nursery and on the play-ground, by the little folks at home. And in their dreams they have pict- ured you and made you majestic as a queen and lovely as an angel. Go home and show them that you are neither; but, what for them is far better than queen or angel, you are a wiser, more considerate, kinder, and more affectionate sister. Lead them. Set them all examples of filial devotion. Teach them truth and honor, patience and courage, meekness and strength, by a varied but consistent example. Sympathize with them. Gather up the floating feelers of their young spirits and bind them to your heart. Make them respect your judgment by your wise assistance in all their pleasures and studies, and make them feel that in you they have a friend whom they may always approach, even when reverence may deter them from entering the presence of their parents. And thus, as they grow older, you will exert an influence upon them which shall go on widening with the channels of their several influences, and descending in blessings upon their children and their children's children. There is one means by which you can be very useful to your younger brothers and sisters. If you are as thoughtful as you should be you make many reviews of the several stages of your education. You perceive wherein you have been neglected, or what you have passed over too superficially. You can prevent or correct these things in the younger children. You can give them the right " start " in their studies, and direct them until they shall have formed proper habits. The most important class in an institution of learn- ing is, perhaps, the youngest. The mode is so much more important than the subject of study ! A young person who has learned how to study may, with comparative ease, acquire all necessary learning. The drudgery of the schools is occasioned by a neglect of the first instructors to teach their pupils how to form proper habits. All this drudgery you may prevent, so far as your brothers and sisters are concerned ; and by so doing you will be a life-long blessing to them ; you will avert solicitudes and anxieties, feverish tears, and 3 20 CHIPS AND CHUNKS discouraging despondency, by teaching a child, not his lesson, but how to acquire that lesson. Your education will certainly be con- sidered worthless if you cannot assume the office of teacher to the younger children. If you do your duty the expense of their educa- tion will be lessened, the time they spend from home will be short- ened, and their stay at high-schools and colleges be made so much more pleasant. There is such a sweet and hallowed power in a sis- ter's love that you will lose much of the happiness of your exist- ence upon earth if you fail to exert it. The Family Servants. There is another sphere of usefulness which lies very near all our educated young ladies, and which lies too much neglected. I allude to the domestics in families. You have certainly grown up with very false views if you have learned to look upon servants as another and an inferior race of beings. They are human and immortal. They are your fellow-sinners. Ranks and orders in society are necessary for our well-being upon earth, and no man should seek to level all to the same position. God has instituted service, and in its place it is honorable. And remember that your Maker is at such an infinite elevation above all classes of society that the distance between the most menial servant and his God seems no greater than that between an earthly monarch and his eternal King, even as we do not think of a mountain-top on our earth as being nearer to a fixed star than the bottom of the lowest valley. While it is quite proper that you should be mistress and another woman should be servant while you are both together upon earth, remember that you will both soon stand before the throne of God, where the only dis- tinctions will lie in the larger or smaller development of the prin- ciples of holiness. These thoughts should have an influence to lead you to be kind and gentle with the servants about your father's house, and to carry the same benignity with you when you assume the place of mistress in your own house if God design this for you. You must give an account for the kind of influence you exert upon the servants when you return home. Some of them may be old. Perhaps some of them nursed you in your infancy, and per- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 32 1 haps, as is sometimes the case in established families, both in England and America, some of them nursed your father or your mother. They will regard you with much tenderness. In any case, going from school with all the accomplishments which the unlearned serv- ants will imagine you possess, whether you do or not, you will be able to exert great influence over them. Now, how will you answer to the Father of your spirit if you spend week after week and month after month in the pursuit of fashionable pleasure, or even in the selfish cultivation of your intellect, and never spend one hour in teaching them the way to God while they have been so near you and your influence over them is so great for good or evil ? Put it to your own conscience. If you let them see in you, in private as well as in public, that the ruling power in your heart is not vanity or pride or worldly-mindedness, but the love of Jesus and of doing good to all for his sake, you will be educating them for a proper dis- charge of duty in this life and for the life to come, even if you never attempt to give them a sentence of oral instruction in the things pertaining to godliness. But if, while a holy and lofty life shall be establishing a powerful sway over them, you take proper occasions to cultivate their hearts by a regular, devoted attention to them on set and proper occasions, you will be preparing stars for your crown in heaven. Reflect also upon the facts that the happiness or misery of any family depends in a large measure upon the character of the serv- ants, and that one good or bad servant has great effect upon the character of the others. And extend this observation to the fact that one happy family in a village or town or country neighborhood, both by its example and by the natural contagion of pleasurable emotions, sheds a delightful social charm all around it. Now, then, if you can gain a right influence over the servants in your father's house, so as to educate them in any measure to act by impulses of right principles, you will do them good, you will relieve the weight that lies upon your mother, you will destroy many discomforts which disturb your father, you will lubricate the joints of the domestic frame-work, you will add another to the number of the happy fam- ilies, and thus make yourself delightfully felt, perhaps, to the remotest verge of society and to the last generation of men. 21 322 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Your Neighbors. The family circle is, certainly, woman's most appropriate theater. There she is to work, there to shine. She is cut off from the fields upon which men of ability and ambition distinguish themselves. She seldom appears on the forum, never in the battle-rage. There can be no female Napoleon, no female Daniel Webster. But woman is human. She has ambition as certainly and as powerfully as man, and when that ambition is unsanctified she will seek her trophies in the triumphs of the ball-room and exercise her diplomacy in the finesse of coquetry. But, alas ! how unsatisfactory are the results. The more and the greater the triumphs the more is she laying up for herself stores of remorse and grief. If she venture upon liter- ature, and even attempt science in the way of authorship, she is made to feel the prejudice which prevails in society against writing- women. Men may admire Madame de Stael and Mary Somerville, but whatever tribute their abilities and learning may wring from the head is usually given with a corresponding diminution of the more precious and spontaneous tribute of the heart. You must have learned already that an ounce of love is worth a ton of admiration. But when the intellect of woman is sanctified, and her labors lie in the direct path of philanthropy, all men feel that they are appro- priate to the gentleness and loveliness and unselfishness of her sex. In her own family is her nearest and best field ; and while circum- stances may occasionally give her opportunities of extending her labors beyond, they are always expected to be another development of this domestic culture. A young lady may begin her work at once and at home by making that home more beautiful in the eyes of all its inmates by a thousand little nameless acts of kindness and good manners. And how finely have Christian manners been called the minor morals ! So much of morals is there in a proper style of man- ners that for usefulness, great and permanent usefulness, a lady may almost as well be destitute of integrity as of courtesy, and winning, sweet, womanly tact and address. I would have you cultivate these, not for display, but as widening your real influence for good and as being one of the most effectual methods of making your home happy to yourself and happy to those whom you are most bound to love. When this is done, when by good husbanding of time you shall FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 323 have found space for the discharge of all your private duties, and with your mother and sisters taken your share of the most unpleas- ant as well as the most pleasant portions of domestic service — which in every household, no matter how many servants there may be, will fall upon the ladies of the house — you may still find some time to devote to your neighbors, and by kind offices bind your family to the families in your immediate vicinity. Teaching. It is the remark of one of the greatest women of this age, Mary Lyon, that " teaching is really the business of almost every useful woman." Look through society and see if this be not true. Now, it does seem to me that no young lady can be properly educated who has not always pursued her studies with a view to teaching in some position. She may not look to employment in our seminaries, but she will have teaching in some of its modes always before her. A young lady who leaves school only to be a woman and be mar- ried, having no plans of usefulness in her mind, is not worth a hus- band, unless, indeed, she should find her mate in the young man who has passed through college simply for the purpose of graduating; and such a couple would be a disgrace to their generation. You must aim at usefulness. Upon quitting school conscience asks, What now ? and your Maker and your race propound this question solemnly to your soul. Let your answer be, to do something for my Lord. Determine to do something. One of the best methods of making larger acquisitions is to use your present acquirements promptly, cheerfully, and con- tinually. You must be willing to be useful in the first field that offers. Dr. Johnson has said that the man who waits until he can find some opportunity of being useful on a magnificent scale will be of little service to society. Enter the first opening, and as you prove yourself faithful in that which is least your Lord will, by and by, make a way for you to be faithful in that which is greatest. If determined to be useful almost the first suggestion to your own mind will be to teach. If there be no younger brother or sister to be instructed there are some poor children in your neighborhood 324 CHIPS AND CHUNKS who have no means of being educated. Could you do better than to gather them together and devote an hour or two every day to their instruction? The most certain way to become exact in any department is to teach. It will be one of the most profitable of all your pursuits. The very fact of its being a gratuity will place you upon the bare platform of principle, as you will teach for the simple object of doing good. You will thus be taking up the ground which paid teachers can never cultivate. In the group of ragged children in your village may be a few minds of superior natural abilities. But no man cares for their souls. They are " pregnant with celestial fire." It may be theirs to " sway the rod of empire," or " wake to ecstasy the living lyre," if some intelligent and kind spirit will seize the direction of their earliest studies. Would it not be a great and a good work to gather a few of those intellects around you, and by the sweet persuasives which your sex knows so well how to use bind them to your love and kindle in them a hungering and thirsting after righteousness and truth? You might have them only a few months or even a few weeks, but you might in that time place the key of knowledge in the hands of some strong and inquisitive intellect which will bring out treasures for the enriching of its generation. You may plant a single good principle which in moments of powerful temptation, when the fate of thousands may hang upon the decision of that single individual, may enable him to dare do right, and thus send a wide-spread blessing to ten thousand homes. If you should ever undertake a work like this you will meet with many discouragements from your own want of self-control and of intellectual and spirit preparation for this work ; and you will be discouraged by the obstinacy, the carelessness, the want of interest in your pupils. This will be the more unpleasant to you as you will think that, when you give your time and strength without fee or reward, the least your pupils can do is to attend and to labor as closely as you do. But remember that they have nothing like the view of the importance of an education which leads you to engage in this work. Keep your heart up. The husbandman has patience and waits for the early and the latter rain. When you shall be sleeping in the last bed of mortals the rude, hard, apparently in- tractable boy whom you drew from the crowd of ragged and FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 325 soiled urchins may have his spirit kindled by the fires from heaven. The spark you dropped on the day when you were, perhaps, most discouraged in regard to his case, and when you went to give him your last lesson and admonition, may be fanned by the Spirit of God until his kindled soul shall be flaming in spiritual power and glory amid the institutions of Christ's Church. It seems to me that to a Christian teacher few things could be more gratifying than to know that those of his pupils whose cir- cumstances lifted them above the necessities of laboring for a sup- port were employing themselves in teaching those to whom no other hands would unfold the book of knowledge. It would be so in accordance with that climax in the Lord's description of the bringing in of his own dispensation of power and mercy and glory — " and to the poor the Gospel is preached." Not a Christian. I speak to you as to a Christian. If you are not, if you have never had the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, then the first great business of life has up to this time been neglected and must take precedence of every thing else. Whatever other employment may engage your faculties, however important in itself considered, it is an intruder upon more im- portant things. It is most melancholy to reflect that you have passed through the whole of your education an impenitent sinner, under the condemnation of God, without peace of conscience and the repose of faith so essential to the highest success. It is important that educated minds should be accompanied by piety. Piety gives to education its most graceful beauty, and edu- cation increases the influence of piety. In your case whatever in- fluence you have had at school has been given directly against Jesus. You have been so far from doing any thing for your Lord that you have actually been standing in the way of the advancement of others. The more accomplished you have become, the more fasci- nating have been your manners, the larger the injury you have wrought. Here, then, are several considerations to lead you to seek im- mediately after a change of heart ; a genuine, spiritual conversion. 326 CHIPS AND CHUNKS 1. You have been doing an injury to the cause of Christ through all your course at school, and your faculties ought, if possible, to be doubly consecrated to God, that, as far as possible, you may coun- teract in society the evil you have already done. 2. Through all your school-course you have been hardening your heart and postponing the hour of your return to God. You have, therefore, been cultivating a habit which will probably at last over- power you unless suddenly broken by God's power. You have said that you could not be pious at school because of the many studies which engaged you, and because of your youth, and because you could not endure the ridicule of your companions. You have given temporary quiet to your conscience by promising that im- mediately upon leaving school you would give your heart to God. That time has arrived. Do you feel more like being pious than you did a year or two ago ? No, not so much. Allow me, my dear young friend, to deal faithfully with you, and show you what will be your probable future course, judging by your past. You will say that you cannot commence the great work of salvation now because you are in the midst of the greeting of friends, and that such cir- cumstances are surely not favorable to religion. You will conclude to postpone the work until you shall have passed through these festivities. But, my friend, when will they close ? When will you cease, to accept invitations and to reciprocate by having parties of pleasure at your father's house ? When will you cease to travel, and settle into a domestic routine? In this interval your accomplishments will probably be bringing suitors around you, and your vanity will be kept in a feverish state, and perhaps one may begin to excite in you a more and more tender interest, and you will not think of the Creator's claims while the love of the creature will be so active at your heart ; and then will come the en- grossing preliminaries of marriage and all the higher festivities of that occasion, and then the gradually increasing cares of domestic life ; and so you will go on with your procrastination until you shall have settled into a hard, cold, Christless woman of the world, ex- erting a most injurious influence over your husband and children. O, this were a result very greatly to be dreaded ! But to it you will almost certainly come at last, Unless, by great decision of char- FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 327 acter, you resolve to put off this work no moment longer. And may the Spirit of all grace help you so to do! 3. Another reason why you should seek these great spiritual changes is that there can be no great usefulness without true piety. Unrenewed men may often seem to be actuated by sentiments of philanthropy, and do those things which will be beneficial to their race ; but to enter upon and prosecute a life-long course of useful- ness requires the steady aid of a consistent piety. All your plans will probably fail unless you be sustained by motives higher than any which can be drawn from earth. To do and to suffer for Christ's sake sanctifies every pursuit and every pang. Before all things, and above all things, my young friend, let me beseech you to seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness. A Christian Student. But perhaps through your whole stay at school you have been endeavoring to cultivate that simple yet powerful piety which springs from faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. If so, you will at once begin to reap the benefits of habits so early formed. You will have the comfort of feeling that if you should be taken early from the world you have left an impression which may endure for centuries : and that that influence will both pass out into the great world with your younger school-mates and will also descend upon successive generations of scholars. This is the nature of school influence. But in addition to this you have the whole power of habit to co-operate with you in your efforts in spiritual self-improvement and in doing good to the bodies and souls of others. This is a most comfortable fact in your case, the full value of which you could not properly appreciate unless you could feel this power suddenly with- drawn from you and flung, with all its magnitude, as a direct ob- stacle in your way. Be grateful to God for all the influences which his providence has brought to bear upon you in your spiritual growth, and be humbled at the remembrance of the too small im- provement made. But what now ? You surely have not supposed the cultivation of piety to be on a footing with the economic regulations of the school, and to be abandoned with those regulations. You are to 328 CHIPS AND CHUNKS go forward. You are to become more and more devoted to the service of God, more and more self-sacrificing, more and more use- ful. Make a review of your religious life while you were at school, and see wherein it is defective according to the gospel standard, and set yourself to work, by the aids of God's Spirit, to make the necessary amendment, resolving to guard against those temptations which heretofore have proved too strong for your weak faith. Without Social Ties. Thus far what is written addresses itself mainly to those who have some domestic ties and social position. But, in America especially, there are many young ladies who have been almost friendless for many years, in whom there has been an indomitable energy and an earnest desire to make themselves, by all possible culture, the peers of their more favored sisters, by preparing themselves thoroughly for all that may justly be regarded as a true woman's rightful work. It is a moral tonic to society to witness the progress of such girls. They combine a force of character which is manly with a tact that is beautifully womanly. They deny themselves. They are heroic. The greatness of the object they set before them ex- pands their character in its pursuit. The pressure upon them gives compactness to all their faculties. They are a spectacle to men and angels. One such woman cuts down the undergrowth and " blazes " a route for the feet of feebler sisters through the thick social forest. And yet they are women, with all the craving for sympathy, ap- preciation, and love which the great Creator has made a character- istic of their sex. An acute pain, not of jealousy and envy, often smites them when they naturally contrast their loneliness with the opulent surroundings of school-mates who have never to practice those small economies which make them seem mean, but which they know to be absolutely essential to a continuance of their studies and the successful completion of their course. When the class shall graduate there will be no father, mother, sister, or brother to take a fond pride in the honors which these uncheered scholars have gained. They carry no pleasure to parents or sisters FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 329 or brothers. They have never had and will not soon have any do- mestics to care for their interests or to be cared for. The future seems very barren to such young hearts. My young friend, perhaps some such condition is yours. Let me speak a tender word to you. There are elements in your case from which you may derive much comfort. Every woman, however favored or unfavored by fortune, will have seasons of terrible trial. Such is woman's history eveiy-vvhere. When these trials come to you you will not have been weakened by early indulgence. Your classmate, whose position has seemed so enviable, may be called to endure the same blow which shall fall upon you ; but you will have been prepared, by all you have suffered, to endure the new distress with a fortitude which has been well trained. If called to walk a rough and stony road your feet will not have a shrinking, sensitive way, which makes the hard path intolerable. You will pass with graceful ease over obstacles the sight of which will make weaker women faint. Character is every thing. As men grow wiser they learn to found their admiration of women more and more upon character and less and less upon antecedents. You will be the very help-meet a strong young man will need and a prudent young man will seek. The light that is in you will shine. In this dark world the light attracts. And when he shall come to you, and join his fortunes for life with yours, he will find the firmest hand to uphold him in that which clasps him with a wifely love. And then your honor will grow. And then that esteem which is the solid foundation of all love that lasts will increase as those years come which break the at- tractiveness of those whose whole existence depends upon physical beauty or social surroundings. There is a beauty in strength. That beauty is yours. Keep on your way. There is room for you. All society fluctuates, but the right and the good are indestructible. It is for a wise purpose that the good Father has put you thus unpropped to grow. He has work for the vine, which must cling to the elm or to the trellis, and he has work for the solitary tree, which he causes to grow up into great bulk and strength on the wide and unprotected plain, or on the top of the bare, bleak mountain. 330 CHIPS AND CHUNKS But, whatever may have been the social antecedents of any young lady, there are reasons why she should not sit down in self-indulgent or in despairing idleness, but enter the large human society around her, to be an active element among her fellow- men. There are many public duties of religion to the strict and proper performance of which educated young ladies should very frequently turn their attention. Whatever influence is gained by the reputa- tion of being educated ought to be thrown upon the side of true, vital godliness, and in favor of all those movements which are made to plant the cross in every human heart. This is a busy time in the world. The uprolling of the night of ages which hung in darkness on the human mind ; the rapid development of physical science ; the sudden transmission of intelligence ; the power of the press — as the power of an uprisen sun flinging almost immediate light on a hemisphere — all these things have quickened the human mind into wonderful activity. Men are more enterprising than of old. It is little to go round the whole earth now for the purpose of compass- ing a point of policy or opening a market for trade. Amid all this stir, bustle, and noise, while caste is breaking and men are leaping the walls of national prejudices built through centuries of years, while old power is seeking to keep its own and new revolutions are seeking to overturn venerable establishments, there is unwonted activity among all the agencies for good and evil. Sin is finding more power in the animated depravity of the human heart. In- quiry is making free with ancient errors and time-honored truths, and Christ and Belial are meeting with more antagonism in court and camp, in the forum and in the market-place. This, then, is no time for the educated of either sex to keep still. Every woman must take her position in this conflict. You will fail of the great earthly end of your being educated unless you place yourself distinctly on the side of every good cause, every cause which labors for the elevation of humanity by the propaga- tion of the principles of the Gospel. This you may do without transcending the proper limits of female delicacy ; and to do your part in society you must always remember that you are a woman. With the graceful restraints of womanly modesty about you FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 33* you may make your mark upon the world, which shall be more powerful and influential than any inscriptions upon monumental marble. To do your share of the work of the world's regeneration, see what forms of error prevail immediately around you ; and without any romantic ideas of magnificent achievements in the moral world take your own neighborhood, and strive, not by lecturing, harangu- ing, and all that kind of agency, but by the inculcation of the opposite truth to extirpate the error. After all that is said, the best way of reclaiming the world from its fallow or brier-covered condition until it shall bloom as the garden of God is for each one to commence in the soil just below his feet and plant it thick with gospel truths, and then steadily work from that point forward until he shall faint in the furrows and fall on the field. Each truth is a vital germ which must live, must spring up, must propagate itself, when once planted. The Gospel of Jesus is to elevate the world. That Gospel is the storehouse of all saving truths. Endeavor therefore to do your part in making the particular church to which you belong a gospel church. You must be a thorough Bible Christian, and by your ex- ample and the thousand nameless influences which you can bring to bear endeavor to draw each professor of our religion up to the standard of the Gospel. If I might venture to say what are the two greatest defects in the Church generally, so far as I know it, I should mention a want of Bible knowledge and a want of Christian liberality. Let me urge you to endeavor to remedy these defects by a hearty, devout, and careful study of the Bible, the whole Bible, in letter and spirit ; by a special cultivation in yourself of liberality, both as regards sentiment and the appropriation of your pecuniary means to unselfish uses ; and then by a strenuous and skillful effort to lead all about you to become more and more deeply interested in gospel teachings, and to devote their means to the spread of the truth. As your own mind becomes more and more imbued with the principles of the Gospel you will take more and more pleasure in stirring a love for those beauties and truths in the hearts of others. 332 CHIPS AXD CHUXKS Christian Duties. You may do much by giving your aid to your pastor in all his labors in which a member of the flock can assist the shepherd. A candid examination of his plans, and a cordial co-operation, will en- courage his soul, will hold up his hands, and will induce others to fall in with their influence, and thus build up your church. You can hardly appreciate the pleasure with which a pastor receives such tokens of interest in the cause of the divine Redeemer, to which he has devoted his life and his energies. Among other agencies there is connected with even- well-instituted church a Sunday-school. One of the greatest difficulties in man- aging such a school is to obtain the necessary number of the right kind of teachers. A Sunday-school teacher should be intelligent, well-educated, and self-sacrificing, as well as really pious. Merely to hear children repeat answers to catechism questions, to read or repeat passages from the Bible by rote, without understanding or appreciation, is not, I should think, discharging the duties of such a post. The teacher should have habits of study, and not shrink from the labor of investigating the Scriptures. By entering heartily upon this work you may make yourself, by God's blessing, a model teacher, may teach teachers, and bring the treasures of a cultivated mind to the elevation of the standard of instruction imparted. In the patient labors which you perform in this department you will be encouraged by two considerations : i. Many of the children in these schools obtain no other literary cultivation. If you do full duty toward your class you will have given them much. You will have instructed them in the idioms of their own language, will have taught them how to read the mother- tongue with propriety and elegance, will have stored their minds with much of the world's history, ancient and modern, and with many facts and principles of physical science, natural history, and geography. The amount of learning which may appropriately be imparted on the Lord's day is by no means contemptible. 2. Remember that the future citizens of the nation, and members of Christ's Church, are committed to your charge to receive their initial training in morals and religion. Many of them have no op- portunity of learning their duties to God and their fellow-men except FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 333 at your hands. They arc to become members of society, are to engage in the trade and commerce of the world, and at the ballot- box are to throw their influence for right or wrong into the councils of a growing commonwealth, now already one of the most powerful nations upon the face of the globe. By the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon your labors they will be brought into the Church ; but they will be strong or weak, wise or worldly, as you may give them the first spiritual bias. You may do much by visitations to the poor and uncultivated, by winning their confidence, by reading to them the word of God and the writings of devout men. Lady Colquhoun, of Scotland, ren- dered good service to her generation in a class for adults which she taught after church service on the Sabbath. It has occurred to me that many of our young ladies would find this a profitable exercise if pursued with humility, energy, and faith ; and there might be cir- cumstances which would favor the formation of such a class to meet at suitable week-day hours. You should make it a point of conscience to secure a knowledge of the operations of every society for the spread of the Gospel con- nected with your own Church, and as far as possible of those attached to other Churches. It is a shame to any person making pretension to be at all educated not to keep herself respectably informed of the plans and movements of such powerful institutions as the Amer- ican Bible Society and the American Tract Society. When this knowledge is gained it should be disseminated. You should talk these things over at home and in company, skillfully introducing such topics so as politely to throw aside the usual small-talk con- cerning dress, parties, and other frivolities. You will thus engage your heart and the hearts of others strongly on the side of the active benevolent operations of the Church. Your pastor will cheerfully assist you in gathering and scattering such useful information. There is one reform which, in this day, is engaging the intellects and hearts of the greatest and noblest spirits of our nation, and to which every educated young lady should give her distinct, earnest, and intelligent co-operation. I allude to the temperance reform. The vice of intemperance has gone so deeply down into the social system that it will require the most strenuous exertion of us all to 334 CHIPS AND CHUNKS pluck it out. But none have suffered so much from intemperance as women, and none should labor with tongue and pen and influence more earnestly than women. You should fill your mind with such an abhorrence of intemperance as to be unable to endure it in any form of pleasure or habit or gain which it may assume. By the love you bear immortal souls, and by the respect you cherish for your sex; by your fear of that retributive justice which may bring the poisoned chalice back to your own lips, and by the awards of God's dread bar, I charge and beseech you never, under any circumstances, to offer " strong drink " to man or woman or child, unless on good grounds for sanitary reasons. Men have been made drunkards by the witching grace with which young and beautiful women have presented them the wine-cup, and have gone forward, with a drunk- ard's madness, to beggar their children and break the hearts of their wives. I would as soon a glittering snake should cross my foot as that I should meet a lady in a social party urging on a man who admires her the goblet which contains her shame and his perdition. I hope better things of you. You will be expected to set your face against intemperance in every way. Shun the young man who drinks and let him know why you shun him. Listen to no words of wooing from the man who is not decidedly and notoriously opposed to the use and traffic of liquor. Let no man persuade you to link your destinies with his because he has just now reformed. He may have reformed, but, alas! the history of habit — of this particular habit especially — shows how uncertain is such reformation. I have known men take vows of abstinence simply that they might blind the confidence of young hearts; and others have, perhaps, sincerely thought thus to have made themselves really worthy the love and alliance they sought ; but in both cases the old habit has been too strong for the young vows, and they have made shipwreck, with a precious cargo of hope and love aboard. Wine so poisons brain and heart that no man who drinks — I do not mean the street- drunkard, but the man who indulges this vice in any measure — is worthy such love as yours. But the root of this great Upas-tree is in the traffic. Let not your smiles, your compliments, or any favor or countenance be shown to the man who makes or sells this social poison ; but coun- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 335 tenance and sustain, to the extent of your influence, the men who are laboring in any ways that are sanctioned by the Holy Script- ures to extirpate this direful evil. Occasionally such a monstrous sight may be seen as a woman opposed to associations for suppress- ing intemperance. Such women # are very ill-informed, weak, or wicked. Do what you can to reform them. Let your whole sex unite its energies in this cause, and the time will come when no more wives will perish under a drunken husband's blows and no orphans live to mourn over a drunken father's disgraced grave. But your heart, my dear young friend, should be large enough to contain this world. While it is natural that your own immediate circle should most deeply interest you it is Christian that you have charity for the whole world. As much for him who hunts in African forests as for him who trades in American cities, for her who flings her baby to the waters of the Ganges as for her who cradles her offspring in English halls, did Jesus Christ the Saviour die. It is part of our Christian education to cherish the missionary zeal. It saves us from the belittling influence of selfishness and sectionalism. God has ordained that man shall be saved by man's instrumentality. The Church is bound to send the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We have too long slumbered over this imperative duty. It is time to arouse ourselves. Let no year of your life pass without your largest possible contribution of time, thought, prayer, influence, and money, to this cause which lies so near the Redeemer's heart. One reason why Christians discharge their duties at home so poorly is that they have not an enlarged sympathy with the race. Our peo- ple know too little of the spiritual destitution of other lands, and therefore do not value and support as they should the Christian institutions in their own vicinity. You are bound to make yourself acquainted with the wants of the world and, as much as in you lies, to supply those wants. What is a Christian ? What was Christ ? Are we to bear his name and have so little of his holy, sympathetic, self-sacrificing nature ? Make it your duty and your pleasure to arouse all around you to a keen feeling of their duty in this partic- ular. Labor modestly, patiently, and perseveringly to make the particular Church to which you belong a powerful auxiliary to the Church catholic in advancing the spiritual regeneration of the world. 336 CHIPS AND CHUNKS And now, my dear young friend, I have endeavored in a brief, simple, and affectionate manner, to answer the question at your heart, What now ? I have merely pointed out some courses of duty which, as an educated Christian lady, you will be bound to pursue. I have not said every thing which might be said. Your Christian intelligence will suggest many other things. If you have right prin- ciples they will come forth into leaves of gracious language and fruits of useful acts, and you will be like a tree planted by rivers of waters. Your Responsibility. You go forth with what a load of responsibility ! Remember the saying of your Saviour, " to whom much is given of him will much be required." You are not to be lost in the mass of uneducated women, nor in the contemptible rabble of women of fashion. It will be a sad thing for you to commence life aimless and float down to the ocean of eternity without strength to steer yourself and aid a fellow-swimmer. You go forth to do something. You go to write a record which shall not shame you in eternity. You go to leave your mark on the world, to open fountains whose waters shall flow in widening streams when you are housed with the shrouded. You are to be a lump of leaven in your family, in your Church, in the world ; and you must labor to leaven the whole. Be not discour- aged by the magnitude of your task. The Master asks no more than you can perform. Do all you can, and leave nothing undone which may be accomplished. The day whose night finds you with no increase of intellectual strength, no increase of learning, no ear- nest struggle with the evil of your heart and of the world, no good deed rightly done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, will be a lost day — lost to you, but gone wandering into eternity to meet you in the hour when judgment shall be had on all your deeds and all your days. Life is for labor, death for rest, and eternity for reward. Faint not. There is an eye above you seeing every hope, every thought, every effort. It is the eye of the tender and unwearying Laborer for the world's redemption. He is not unmindful — to forget your labor of love. Man's praise or blame is but the modification of a worm's breath ; it can do you little permanent harm or good. But FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 337 the approbation of Jesus is the life's end of angels and good men. Men honor success; Jesus honors intention. If you attempt great good things your reward in eternity will not be varied by any cal- culation of success or failure. Therefore toil on. You will be called to suffer. This is woman's lot ; the effects of woman's sin. But suffering may be beautiful ; this is the effect of the grace purchased by Christ's blood. You may bless your race as much from the room of sickness as from the teacher's seat. A les- son of patience under the rod may impress a powerful soul with the truth and glory of Christianity and send its influence to the heights and depths of human society. He that suffers patiently as much brings glory to the Saviour's name as he who labors energetically. One who has discharged every duty in health may, in God's name, embrace the couch of sickness as freely as successful ambition em- braces the throne of power. But what has an aimless, listless, or fashionable woman of pleasure to cheer and strengthen her when sickness and death shall come? Nothing done, nothing attempted ; life past a dreary desert, life to come a gloomy pit. Be not so, pre- cious friend, but daily plant the trees which shall bring forth flowers to strew your sick-bed and garland your grave. "So live that when the mighty caravan, Which halts one night-time in the vale of death, Shall strike its white tents for the morning march, Thou shalt mount onward to the eternal hills, Thy foot unwearied, and thy strength renewed, Like the strong eagle's, for the upward flight." "FOR HIM." A Short True Story. Two young ladies are studies for me. They are nearly the same age. Ellen Ethridge, the elder, is the more cultivated. Virginia Roberts is the more gifted, the taller, the more beautiful. They are unmarried, are cousins, are members of the same church, and are much together. Miss Ellen is very conscientious, Miss Virginia very impulsive. They are very pleasant, and both have many friends in common, while each has also her particular circle. They are both 22 338 CHIPS AND CHUNKS my friends, and therefore I have substituted the names above for the real names. If I had time and skill it seems to me that I might make quite a story of what of their lives has come under my ob- servation. As I cannot do that I will simply place before my readers one phase of difference in these two interesting characters. Virginia has what I might really call the habit of going to Ellen for advice and never taking it. Ellen is impulsive, but her conscience governs her; Virginia is conscientious, but allows her impulse to sway her. It is her conscience which brought Virginia into the Church and sends her to Ellen for advice. It is her impulsiveness which makes her often go against the very advice she had sought, and do those things which stricter church members avoid. Ellen has had certain heart-experiences the memory whereof is, perhaps, quite solemn to her and therefore must be very sacred to others. Some time ago Virginia came to Ellen to ask her opinion about going to the opera and the theater. Now, she knew perfectly well what ground Ellen would take ; but whenever a new question arose she seemed to feel that just to have asked Ellen must be the dis- charge of her whole duty in the premises. This new question came in this way: Virginia had a lover. This gentleman had very loose notions of church obligations ; indeed, he did not believe in Church at all, and at heart was thoroughly irreligious. Virginia was very agreeable to him, but would have been more agreeable if she had had no church relations. He determined to proceed gradually in the work of loosening her church ties. Nothing could do this so effectually as drawing her to the opera and the theater. He was too shrewd to attack her creed and religious life openly. Indeed, sometimes he went to church and to other religious meetings with her, after he had told her how distasteful all such things were to him ; he made the sacrifice for her sake ! As she became interested in him how natural it would be for her to reason that if, for her sweet sake, he went to places of no interest to him it might be her duty to accompany him to his amusements, and how naturally even her conscience might be used by her impulses in leading her astray, under the suggestion that she might have more influence in draw- ing her lover to church if she accompanied him to places of worldly amusement ! FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 339 It is not difficult to conjecture what advice she received from Ellen. " Virginia," said Ellen, " going to the theater is right or wrong or of doubtful morality. A woman should be very careful how she deals with doubtful things ; but a Christian has a plain rule : he must never do any thing the moral propriety of which he doubts. That's a fixed rule. The apostle teaches that he is condemned who does a doubtful thing. Now, Virginia, if it is not plainly your duty to go to the theater, then it is among the doubtful things. You needn't come to me about them; go to St. Paul." And Virginia went to the theater ! Of course a soul that takes that road soon finds it full of " forks." Her lover was always bringing her to the forks of the road. Ellen had in advance pointed out the difficulties of the case. " Virginia, your friend began to love you as a Christian. Can he love you as much if you cease to^be a Christian? The love which is without respect is a sickly passion and short-lived. Can he respect you if he finds that you are doing that which it troubles your conscience to do?" " But he may take a dislike to me, and quit me." " Would that be as bad as if he should not quit you and yet take a dislike to you? Have you ever considered that? He knows your duty as a lover of Jesus Christ. If he sees you proving yourself unfaithful to that love do you think he will entirely confide in your fidelity to himself?" " O, Ellen, you always put such things in such an awful way ! You look so hard at duty. You take no pleasures. You give up all the enjoyments of life." " My dear Virginia, listen to me," said Ellen, with a deep, grave voice. Then there was a pause. " Dear Virginia," Ellen resumed, " I once stood just where you do. You were then a little girl and knew nothing of my heart's sorrows. I had been married to Jesus. When I took my church vows upon me I was the mortal bride and he was the immortal Bridegroom. This holy union did not preclude the coming of a mortal bridegroom, but it was to sanctify every other love. Whatever love sought to come in between Jesus and my heart was to be regarded as base, and any leaning toward it on my part would be a defiling sin. Then he came — such a full type of young manhood ; so handsome, so strong, so learned for his age, and 340 CHIPS AND CHUNKS fresh from a German university. Never mind, I can't talk much of him. It was the old story. I was sweet to him in spite of my con- scientiousness, not because of it. The sight of that fact came to me. Then was I in my fiery furnace. Naturally I longed to go out ; to go walking the green fields with my charming young friend. But suddenly I saw One walking with me. I looked into his face and instantly knew that it was the Son of God, my immortal Bridegroom. ' Will you stay with Me and let him go, or go with him and leave Me?' was uttered with a most ineffable smile. 0, Virginia, never to my dying day shall I cease to be grateful that grace was then given me to cling to him who is now to me the Chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely. Now, do not think I am unhappy. If I had given up all frivolities and the gay pleasures of the world and had nothing in return I should have made a bad bargain. And that is just the way the people of the world look at Christians, as if they had nothing in place of that which they surrender. You find a woman who never leaves the house, but is devoted to a life-long cripple, and you think only of what that woman loses. But that cripple is her son. For him she does it. She has all the pleasure of gratifying the maternal instincts, and then she has her son's intense affection in return. She is satisfied." There was silence for a while. Ellen had put such a tone into the phrase " for him " that it rang through Virginia's soul. She was not aware that she exclaimed aloud, " For him ! " " Yes, Virginia," resumed Ellen, " for Him ! You have reached the point where you must choose. Shall it be for Him who died for love of you, or for him who is striving to seduce you from alle- giance to the Divine ? " Silence again. Ellen was breathing deeply and slowly and reg- ularly. Virginia was almost sobbing. It became intolerable, and with the cry of " For him ! For him ! " she rushed from the room. A few months will show for which " him " her heart is to make its decision, and that decision will settle the question of her doom or her salvation. A few months did show. I write this several years after the pre- ceding narrative was written. Virginia yielded to her lover. She went his whole length of worldly gayeties until they married. Just FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 34 1 before her marriage she discovered that her lover had a little daugh- ter. This was a great shock to her. But so powerful, was the influence the man had obtained over her that he found little difficulty in explaining that he was a widower, and that his great love for her made him afraid that she would not accept him if she thought she should be encumbered with a child. When a woman has given up her divine Lover for a man of sin, he becomes an infernal master. Virginia took even this new insult to her woman- hood. She felt that she had gone too far to retreat. She plunged forward. It was scarcely six weeks after her marriage when she came to me with a white and haggard face, which looked years older than on the day of her nuptials although even then it was shadowed. She could not then be sure that the man who had deceived her in so important a matter might not have other concealments the discovery of which would give her agony. She came to tell me that she was suffering the torture of being compelled to live in the house with the mistress of her husband, who almost daily subjected her to the most humiliating insults. She could endure it no longer, and was now seeking counsel of her friends as to the best method of secur- ing a separation from her husband. It would make a long story to tell of all she suffered while the legal processes drew their slow length along. It is sufficient to point the moral of this true story to say that Virginia is now a prematurely old woman without home, without husband, without child, without lover. She has learned a lesson. Will it do any one any good ? If she tell it as a warning to any other woman, who is young and is a Christian, and has a lover who does not love Christ, will it save that young Christian ? Did Ellen's story save her? But with these two pictures seen together may not some one be saved from going in the paths of the destroyer? A few Sundays ago I looked down from the pulpit upon Ellen and Virginia. The latter looked so faded and hopeless, the former so chastened, so steadfast, so peaceful. Remember, my daughter, that the man who will not give up every thing for Jesus Christ is not to be expected to make any sacrifice for you. 342 CHIPS AND CHUNKS JAMES BRAINERD TAYLOR'S -MISS W ." Some of those situations in life which appear, at first sight, least favorable to extensive usefulness, may be so improved by a holy dis- ciple as to become a fountain of many streams. In the memoir of James Brainerd Taylor there is frequent mention made of a Miss W . The name of that lady was Pamela Wigton. While spend- ing the winter of 1839 m tne clt Y °f New York the Rev. Mr. Janes (afterward Bishop Janes) invited the writer of this sketch to take an appointment to preach every third Thursday night in a private house, in conjunction with himself and Dr. Bangs. The invitation was accepted. I found the place in the third story of a house in a small street in the lower end of the city. A long, dark, narrow pas- sage, where two persons could scarcely walk abreast, led to a wind- ing flight of stairs. At the head of this I found a room of mod- erate dimensions very plainly, but very comfortably and even neatly furnished. Propped with cushions in a rocking-chair sat a lady of about fifty-five years of age, very interesting in her whole appear- ance, but very emaciated, and almost unable to assist herself in any respect. The oftener I visited her the more and more lovely did she appear. For more than twenty years, I think she told me, she had been confined to her room, and a large portion of the time to her bed. Once she had been able to be carried carefully to a steam- boat and to go a short distance up the Hudson River. She suf- fered frequent and acute and sometimes protracted pain. I have sat for hours at her feet listening to her conversation, which was rich in memorials of many prominent persons and events, but still richer in a varied and profound Christian experience. Sometimes, for whole minutes, paroxysms of pain would seize her, and I could tell when they were coming by the increasing pressure of her hand ; and then she would be silent for a short time, and the twitching of her features betrayed the agony which the firm and devout expres- sion of her eyes showed she was endeavoring to endure in the strength which God supplies. Then her hand would relax and her features fall into their usual play, and, with an ejaculation of thanks- giving, a tear or two, expressed by pain, standing in her mild eyes, while mine were moist with sympathy, she would ask to be reminded of the subject of our conversation, and resume her remarks with a FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 343 cheerfulness which I could scarcely comprehend. Every attention, ho matter how small, she would receive with, if nothing more, an appreciating look, which made it a pleasure to smooth her pillow, or adjust her cushion, or hold a cup of water to her lips. So beau- tiful was grace in her that it soon became a delight to be in her presence. Many a time have I walked whole blocks in a dark and rainy night, and often when in pain myself, to be soothed and strength- ened by an example which preached endurance with a wonderful power and a voice made musical by love. Though dim of vision, she seemed instinctively to know the state of my feelings from the tones of my voice ; and when, sick and jaded, I came to her from some public service, or from my desk, she would part my hair with her trembling hands and kiss my forehead with a motherly affection that made me feel like a child, and then talk to me of Christian heroism, and of the noble souls who have toiled in pain for the fade- less crown, till I felt the spirit of a man revived in me. No one knows how many an hour I have spent in that obscure place, nor the blessed influences which that holy invalid exerted over my youthful ministry. It was a preaching-place, as I have said. Those who heard Bishop Janes often know the peculiar character of his preaching — how full it was of Christ and Christian consolation. Perhaps some of the very finest of those thoughts and expressions which won the almost loving attention of the thousands who waited in crowds upon his ministry were uttered in that little room to half a dozen persons, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians ; for all classes and denom- inations who knew Miss Wigton delighted in visiting her. By much the best sermon I ever heard Dr. Bangs deliver was preached at Miss W 's, from 1 Peter ii, 7: " To you, therefore, which be- lieve he is precious." The light that played on the invalid's face was a beautiful and forceful commentary upon the text and a strik- ing corroboration of the sermon. In the long period of her illness she had enjoyed the services of many of the Lord's servants, and her recollection of their discourses and conversations furnished her with abundant materials for the entertainment and edification of her visitors. Who would not say, at first sight, that her scope of labor and of 344 CHIPS AND CHUNKS usefulness was very limited ? She was sick, weak, in pain, confined to her room, subsisting upon the benefactions of others ; withal, she had no superior intellectual gifts, and had had very little advantage of education. And yet her influence was felt in the far West of Amer- ica and in Europe. By the assistance of her friends she maintained a correspondence with Christians at great distances, who had been profited by her example and conversation. I acted as her amanuensis in writing to a clergyman in the West, who had entered the ministry as a man would enter upon the practice of the law. After a few years of almost utter uselessness he became acquainted with Miss W . She soon found that he " had not the root of the matter in him," that he was destitute of a proper knowledge of salvation, and had no personal interest in the atonement. She commenced to make his deficiencies manifest to himself. He became convinced that he was a sinner. His agony for some time was very great ; but with a holy wisdom she led the stricken sinner to the Lamb of God, and there at her feet he was converted, and returned to his people a new man in Christ Jesus, ready to do a great work. When John Summerfield commenced his ministry in America he received much spiritual nursing from this mother in Israel. She loved him dearly. It was delightful to hear her talk of that young disciple. When James Brainerd Taylor first went to New York, as a subordinate clerk, I think, in some establishment, he was very thoughtless and wayward. His brother took him to see Miss W . She became interested in him at once and succeeded in winning him to her. There was nothing querulous, peevish, disagreeable, or repulsive in Miss W . The young could love her. She soon gained a mas- tery over the mind of young Taylor. By degrees she interested him in religious subjects, and then in the subject of his personal salvation, until " the day dawned and the shadows fled away," and he was a free man in Christ Jesus. The Lord led him to the work of the ministry, and during his preparatory studies he was instru- mental in turning many from darkness to light. The Lord took him from the evil to come, but not before he had opened springs which shall flow down through the history of the Church. The let- ters which he wrote to Miss W she preserved as a sacred memorial of his excellence and holiness. Some of them appear in FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 345 his memoirs, and I have had the pleasure of having for a short time in my possession the little green bag in which they were so carefully deposited. What an example of endurance in these latter times ! No mis- sion to China or to the islands of the sea could be sublimer than hers. She was a living witness to the triumphs of faith over pov- erty, suffering, and confinement. She was poor, but made many rich ; she was unknown, and yet well known ; she had nothing, and yet possessed all things ; she was dying, yet behold she lived ! How many young ladies in our churches would look upon imprisonment for twenty years in a chamber of sickness as being a prolonged death. O, ye daughters of ease, learn to look upon your lives in the blaze of fortune and fashion as despicable when compared with hers ! Ye that are sick and poor, and wish to do something for your Lord, " learn " not only " how sublime," but how Christian and how useful "a thing it is to suffer and be strong." A holy life — that is usefulness. Holiness of heart, in His members, is the lever with which his people must lift the world to lay it at the feet of Christ. If all the young were like Taylor, and all the aged and suffering like his Miss W , how lovely would Christianity become in the eyes of the world, and how powerfully would sinners be attracted to the cross ! I have written this sketch in the hope that the example to which it points may not be lost upon young women, who by and by may be afflicted and in old age. There is no power in the universe to stay the irresistible influence of any human being whose soul is sanctified by the Spirit and whose life is devoted to the work of Christ. MARY LYON AND LADY COLQUHOUN. I have mentioned Mary Lyon as one of the greatest of her sex. Let me earnestly request you to give a careful reading to every page of The Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon, compiled by Edward Hitchcock, D.D., LL.D." * Keep it in your library. It will probably do you more * Published by the American Tract Society. 346 CHIPS AND CHUNKS good at your present stage than any other. If you can, visit her school at South Hadley, Mass. A much inferior woman was Lady Colquhoun, of Scotland. Her memoir, written by James Hamilton, D.D., of London, is published in New York. She might be much inferior to Alary Lyon and yet be, as she was, a shining light in her circle. I make an extract from her Journal : " I have begun a new plan at our school on Sundays — a class for grown-up girls. They commit nothing to memory. But I explain the Bible and catechism. . . . The class is flourishing and always increasing. Several old people attend regularly, and I hope to have more. ... I have a pretty large congregation, and it needs some nerve. But I hope to be able to go on, and I hear it is much liked. May God send a blessing ! " Her biographer adds : " These Horce Sabbaticcz were not only very popular, but became extremely useful. During the week her ladyship studied with much care the passage which she intended to explain, and exerted her- self to find anecdotes and illustrations which might render it more interesting and memorable. Her manner was full of calm benevo- lence and mild persuasion ; and, whatever nervousness she might feel, her address was so fluent, natural, and dignified, that the thoughts of the audience were solely directed to the subject. In unison with that devout and holy life which they all knew that their instructress led those exhortations were singularly impressive. On a dying bed more than one of her young hearers gave evidences of having been by this means brought to the Saviour ; and from the grateful tenderness in which many of the survivors hold their teacher's memory it may be hoped that all her works have not yet followed her." If space allowed I should be pleased to give other extracts from her ladyship's journal, and her biographer's remarks upon the right and wrong manner in conducting such classes. But you may read the book. Kv - f - ;; ^ s v V FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 347 PHOEBE CARY'S HYMN. A correspondent has asked us to furnish Phoebe Cary's hymn, "One sweetly solemn thought," etc. This hymn of our late beloved parishioner has appeared in many versions, some of which damage the poetry while they fit the stanzas to music. There was no special tune in her ears or in her mind when she wrote it. The theme came to her one Sunday morning, in 1842, as she was returning from church. She sat down and wrote off very rapidly the verses which had formed themselves around that theme. These she afterward carefully corrected and published. They became immediately popular. The latest version was made under the following circumstances : One day she was ushered into our back parlor as we sat with a sprained ankle in a vessel of water. She was almost always very bright and witty, and for awhile her conversation was very gay ; she was cheer- ing her imprisoned and perhaps impatient pastor. When the con- versation turned on graver topics he made this remark : " Phoebe, it's amazing how many hymn-books there are and how few are the hymns that are sung. Now, here lies a book used by a large denom- ination. It contains over a thousand hymns. I have gone over them all and marked every hymn I have heard sung or quoted in whole or in part, and there are very few over two hundred that are marked, and less than a hundred that I have heard frequently. Other hymns, of course, may have been used and heard by other persons, and so the total might be set down at three hundred. It would seem that three fourths of .the hymn-books had been printed and carried about for the sake of the useful one fourth." " Why," said she, " don't you know that there are not three hun- dred hymns in the language that are worth using, or that will live a hundred years?" Then, after a pause, she added: "Let's make a little book that will have the three hundred best." " Agreed," was the answer. After she left the conversation was considered. One evening we said : " Are you ready to begin that hymn-book ? " " Yes," she replied. We went at it. We gathered all the books we could find. Over twenty thousand metrical compositions in English, German, 348 CHIPS AND CHUNKS and Latin, were examined. Three hundred were selected. Some were inserted, removed, and re-inserted. Some were removed and never replaced, but stood so near the line we had marked that if others for any reason had fallen out of line those would have taken their place. Thus came the volume called, Hymns for all Chris- tians. Subsequently, after Phoebe's Cary's death, the poet Whit- tier wrote us that in his opinion there were only about twenty hymns in the language that were in all respects worth the name, " and thee has them all in thy collection." It was while we were at work on this collection, in her room over the parlor in the house in Twentieth Street, in which Alice Cary died, that we said : " Now, Phoebe, let us put in your ' Sweetly solemn thought.' " " O, that was not written for a hymn." " Nevertheless people will sing it, and as I have allowed you to insert hymns on your own independent judgment, and one of mine is among them, it is my turn now. Yours shall go in." "Well, I'll look it over and fix it up. Posterity never did any thing for me, but I suppose I must do something for posterity. I'll re-write it just as I want it to stand forever, and I'll never touch it again." And the following is that last version : One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er ; I'm nearer my home to-day Than I ever have been before. Nearer my Father's house, Where the many mansions be; Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the crystal sea ; Nearer the bound of life, Where we lay our burdens down ; Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown : But the waves of that silent sea Roll dark before my sight, That brightly the other side Break on a shore of light. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 349 O, if my mortal feet Have almost gained the brink, If it be I am nearer home Even to-day than I think, Father, perfect my trust : Let my spirit feel in death That her feet were firmly set On the Rock of a hying faith. After the death of Alice, Phoebe's health and spirits failed almost at once. In her last sickness, when she was very low-spirited, we tried to cheer her one day by repeating to her a story about her hymn which had appeared in the Boston Daily News. It was this : A gentleman in China, intrusted with packages for a young man from his friends in the United States, learned that he would probably be found in a certain gambling-house. He went thither, but, not seeing the young man, sat down and waited in the hope that he might come. The place was a bedlam of noises, men getting angry over their cards and frequently coming to blows. Near him sat two men — one young, the other forty years of age. They were betting and drinking in a terrible way, the older one giving utterance con- tinually to the foulest profanity. Two games had been finished, the young man losing each time. The third game, with fresh bottles of brandy, had just begun, and the young man sat lazily back in his chair while the older shuffled his cards. The man was a long time dealing the cards, and the young man, looking carelessly about the room, began to hum a tune. He went on, till at length he began to sing the hymn of Phoebe Cary above quoted. The words, says the writer of the story, repeated in such a vile place, at first made me shudder. A Sabbath-school hymn in a gambling den ! But while the young man sang the elder stopped dealing the cards, stared at the singer a moment, and, throwing the cards on the floor, ex- claimed : " Harry, where did you learn that tune ? " "What tune?" "Why, that one you've been singing." The young man said he did not know what he had been sing- 350 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ing, when the elder repeated the words, with tears in his eyes, and the young man said he had learned them in a Sunday-school in America. "Come," said the elder, getting up; " come, Harry; here's what I won from you ; go and use it for some good purpose. As for me, as God sees me, I have played my last game and drunk my last bottle. I have misled you, Harry, and I am sorry. Give me your hand, my boy, and say that, for old America's sake, if for no other, you will quit this infernal business." The gentleman who told the story saw these two men leave the gambling-house together and walk away arm in arm, and he remarked, in writing it out : " It must be a source of great joy to Miss Cary to know that her lines, which have comforted so many Christian hearts, have been the means of awakening in the breast of two tempted and erring men on the other side of the globe a resolution to lead a better life." It was a great comfort, as she testified to us and to others. And now, since we have been drawn into writing about this be- loved friend, we will add another thing. Several years ago we were invited to address the young ladies of the Seminary in Charleston, S. C. Among other things we insisted upon patience at literary work, and told our fair young hearers that the writers of both sexes who had achieved success had been painstaking. Young ladies dash off stanzas that sound musical to the ears of the writ- ers, and send off the first copy to the editor of some magazine, and are surprised that they are not accepted. It was not so with Phcebe Cary. She wrote and rewrote. She rewrote the stanza be- ginning " But the waves of that silent sea " eight times. We thought we could lay hands on that particular autograph, but failing to do so we furnish another specimen of Phcebe Cary's handwriting. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 353 FOR YOUNG MEN. THE TRUE BASIS OF MANHOOD. [Delivered before the Faculty and students of Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, 1856.] Gentlemen : When your invitation, so generously expressed, first made its appeal to me, it found me in the midst of manifold en- gagements which taxed my strength and occupied my time. The pleasure of seeing so many young men as are collected at this seat of learning, so many who are hereafter so powerfully to influence the destiny of this republic ; the pleasure of seeing so many older men, wmose presence is a blessing because they have enriched with large learning the spirit which they have purified by the sweet offices of piety — men who have already made their mark upon the age — these and all the fine excitement of this literary festival came with their potent temptation to a brain and a heart wearied with the daily toil of a laborious life ; and I consented to push aside a por- tion of my work in order to gather my cluster of thought to con- tribute to this interesting occasion. Almost as soon as I had accepted the invitation the reaction of the severe excitement of my winter-work came on me. Apologies are awkward things, but perhaps it is due you to know that the pages I have prepared to read you have been written by a propped invalid, in such intervals as, with shaded eyes, he has ventured against his physician's remonstrance to arrange a few paragraphs which, for the truths they contain, he humbly hopes will be accepted as the token of the will he has to achieve greater and better things. What the world wants now is men, largely and well developed men. Your business is to make yourselves such by all the educa- tion your circumstances will allow ; my business is to endeavor to afford you encouragement and stimulus in this lofty work, by con- siderations which shall commend themselves to your judgment and your hearts. In his renowned treatise Uept f Yi/>£wc the ancient critic Longinus quotes from the Book of Moses and points to the passage recording 354 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the blazing fiat " Light be ! " with its simple historic supplement " Light was ! " as a remarkable example of the sublime. When one stands at any point of view before the face of material nature and sees how light paints the tapestry of the vaulted sky, and glows in the gold and emerald of the varied earth, and leaps and laughs amid the flashing billows of the phosphorescent sea — when he re- members how every beauty sleeps in stupor until the lips of the light kiss it into existence — he grows in wonder at the creative power which spoke a blaze of life and loveliness over the sunless world. But, gentlemen, if the present speaker were called upon to select from all the writings of men and all the recorded words of God the loftiest specimen of the sublime of power, he should find it in that same book of Moses, but not in any thing connected with the make and furniture of this goodly world or the startling of systems into existence. "And God said, Let us make man!' That was the loftiest thought in the divine mind. That was the grandest strain in the Oratorio of Creation. And then MAN stood forth — the Mont Blanc among the Alps of existences ! Apart from the wonderful elements which conspire to make man — apart from the steady reason, traveling in the strength of a giant along the highway of thought — apart from the excursive imagina- tion, trying its wing where the ether is rarest, and scattering from that wing worlds of furnished beauty as the eagle flings the sea-surf from its pinions — apart from the hopes, perhaps the prophesyings, of immortality which sound their harp-notes in every chamber of his faculties and speak of an expanding life to come — apart from all these there is much to interest us in the surroundings and rela- tions of man, and much to make each of us desire to be still more a man in all the fullness and richness of the complete development of the better elements of our nature. The very first thought which occurs to us on this topic is the re- lation which man bears to the material universe around him. We will not assume the truthfulness of the Mosaic account of creation. Let us take facts. The material creation must have existed before man, whether the world be eternal or was created, or this won- drous frame came to its status by the fortuitous concurrence of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 355 eternal atoms, which concurrence inaugurated itself before the ad- vent of man. Man came. He cannot have been eternal. The nature of mind and the facts of the past leave no room for philoso- phy, in its insanest dreams, to believe that. Now, he is either the result of this fortuitous concurrence, or he is a creature, the embodied will of a higher mind. He comes of Tt%?/ or Zsvc, Chance or God. Is it chance ? Look at the world. There are the splendors glow- ing in the vault above and dancing over the earth beneath ; there is all that indescribable opulence of magnificent combinations of beauties, clustering in crystals, waving in trees, sparkling in watery orbs, and wreathing itself in rippling streams ; there is all the music sighing along the shore, pealing in anthems over the seas, moaning among the forests, tinkling in caseades, and making the mountains roar by the blasts it blows along the paths of crushing avalanches ; there is a perfume which steals to the vault of nature's cathedral from the myriad painted censers which open themselves in the hearts of the beautiful flowers ; there is the great lore of the uni- verse, written with the pen-characters of stars in the illuminated volume of the firmament or monumented in the eternal hills of granite, or cabalistically locked in the cabinets of nature, inscrip- tions in disjointed foil, waiting the electric flash to bring out their powerful truths. How came all this ? Came it of chance ? But when you have surveyed all these wonders, these rarities, these exquisite fittings, these perfect pictures, this inconceivable array of magnificences and miniatures — all the precise beauties the microscope detects, all the grandeurs the telescope finds flaring in the further skies — remember that without yourself, or some other man, some mind to throb and glow and kindle at the touches of beauty — remember that all this library of philosophy and poetry is locked up ; remember that here is the grandest possible gallery of paintings where there is no eye to behold it, telegraphic whisper- ings over all the woven lines of the world without an ear at the end of the wires to catch the intelligence and re-telegraph it to a sensi- tive brain. Remember that, without man, here is a new grand city, built up with walls that have towers and gates higher than the Hypsistae of Thebes, built with wide streets paved with precious stones, crowded with mansions having saloons and chambers and 356 CHIPS AND CHUNKS cloisters, columned and fluted and painted, a city made sacred by temples and shaded with groves and cooled with fountains, a city for multiplied millions, and yet a city whose streets have no promenaders, whose workshops no artisans, whose mansions no in- habitants, and whose temples no worshipers ; a city silent, not be- cause the living have died there, but because no pulse ever stirred its awful stillness. But man comes ; and how suddenly all things show their fitness! The lines from the circumference of the universe find their center in him. Music has an auditor, perfume a sensorium, and every beauty is reproduced upon a surface as sensitive as a nerve and more enduring than the flaming sun. Man comes ! He has a key for every cabinet and a cipher wherewith to read every hieroglyphic. He comes ! And there is life and beauty and power every-where. He comes and reports the universe to itself. He lays his mind bare to all things, and this material world which is passing away makes its inscription there, and thus the perishable becomes immortal. Did " chance " make all this preparation for the grand advent? Or did chance first fitfully build this universe without regard to its august inhabitants? And did it then perceive that it had designed without design ; made progress, but toward no end ? And did it then seize the whole chain of existences at both ends and bring the ter- mini together in this new fortuitous product, this link which holds all links together and makes the whole sparkle with splendor and leap with life? Did chance do all this? Why, then, chance works such miracles as faith reports of God. And I am asked to believe in blindness groping its way to the completion of works of perfection, instead of full-sighted wisdom and power, willing and achieving. I will do no such thing. I see : my God must at least see ! Gentlemen, the universe of matter may or may not prove the ex- istence of a wise, powerful, and beneficent Maker ; man, considered by himself, in the construction of his body and the endowment of his mind, may or may not prove the same proposition. But look at the fact that without man every thing is nothing, that with him every thing flies to a high value ; look at the fact that, without the world of matter, man is a reporter where there are no proceedings, a clock rolling its hands over an unmarked dial-plate, a mirror FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 357 where there is nothing to reflect, a microscope where there is noth- ing minute, a telescope where there is nothing afar, a sun where there is nothing to shine upon. But when man is introduced to nature, when he steps down upon the platform of matter, all nature feels him and he feels all nature. When he stands up in the power and glory of his new life and shouts to the roaring sea, shouts to the mountain-top, shouts to the trembling stars, " I am ! I live, I think, I feel ! " the seas, the mountains, and the stars give back the shout " God is ! God thinks, God feels ! " All the streams that flow rush toward the mighty reservoir of his mind and heart. All the fit- nesses connect, every diapason of the universe rolls its concord of sweet sounds, the diaeresis of nature is removed, and it syllables the name of God. No wonder that to the highest ancient mind the idea of chance was supplemented with the idea of Providence, and thus while the name was retained the notion was utterly annihilated by being dei- fied, and from the realm of shadows and the floating threads of acci- dent the mind fled away to the substantialities of a directing power and the strong cords of a divine Providence. Hence Pindar sang of what was done gvv Qeov rvxa, by the chance of God, and even the soberer Herodotus qualified rvxa with the epithet of Qsia. The universe being, and man being therein, there must be a God. We are thus led by considering man's relation to the physical universe to consider his relation to God and thus to the spiritual world. What is God? What relations does man bear to him ? These are very interesting questions, which we do not propose to preach upon, but to look at simply as the questions have bearing on the growth of our manhood. In all the theories we find one or the other of these elements : God is the creature of man or the maker of man. The former is largely common. When a French philo- sophical lecturer said at one stage of his course, " Gentlemen, I now proceed to create God," it was not very startling to his audience; but when it came to be repeated in the orthodox circles of this land it seemed revolting and blasphemous. Gentlemen, he only said he was going to do what many of us often do without the calm preliminary announcement. In their theories and in their numbers, in their discourses and in their systems of living, too 356 CHIPS AND CHUNKS cloisters, columned and fluted and painted, a city made sacred by temples and shaded with groves and cooled with fountains, a city for multiplied millions, and yet a city whose streets have no promenaders, whose workshops no artisans, whose mansions no in- habitants, and whose temples no worshipers ; a city silent, not be- cause the living have died there, but because no pulse ever stirred its awful stillness. But man comes ; and how suddenly all things show their fitness! The lines from the circumference of the universe find their center in him. Music has an auditor, perfume a sensorium, and every beauty is reproduced upon a surface as sensitive as a nerve and more enduring than the flaming sun. Man comes ! He has a key for every cabinet and a cipher wherewith to read every hieroglyphic. He comes ! And there is life and beauty and power every- where. He comes and reports the universe to itself. He lays his mind bare to all things, and this material world which is passing away makes its inscription there, and thus the perishable becomes immortal. Did " chance " make all this preparation for the grand advent ? Or did chance first fitfully build this universe without regard to its august inhabitants? And did it then perceive that it had designed without design ; made progress, but toward no end? And did it then seize the whole chain of existences at both ends and bring the ter- mini together in this new fortuitous product, this link which holds all links together and makes the whole sparkle with splendor and leap with life? Did chance do all this? Why, then, chance works such miracles as faith reports of God. And I am asked to believe in blindness groping its way to the completion of works of perfection, instead of full-sighted wisdom and power, willing and achieving. I will do no such thing. I see : my God must at least see ! Gentlemen, the universe of matter may or may not prove the ex- istence of a wise, powerful, and beneficent Maker; man, considered by himself, in the construction of his body and the endowment of his mind, may or may not prove the same proposition. But look at the fact that without man every thing is nothing, that with him every thing flies to a high value ; look at the fact that, without the world of matter, man is a reporter where there are no proceedings, a clock rolling its hands over an unmarked dial-plate, a mirror FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 357 where there is nothing to reflect, a microscope where there is noth- ing minute, a telescope where there is nothing afar, a sun where there is nothing to shine upon. But when man is introduced to nature, when he steps down upon the platform of matter, all nature feels him and he feels all nature. When he stands up in the power and glory of his new life and shouts to the roaring sea, shouts to the mountain-top, shouts to the trembling stars, " I am ! I live, I think, I feel ! " the seas, the mountains, and the stars give back the shout " God is ! God thinks, God feels ! " All the streams that flow rush toward the mighty reservoir of his mind and heart. . All the fit- nesses connect, every diapason of the universe rolls its concord of sweet sounds, the diaeresis of nature is removed, and it syllables the name of God. No wonder that to the highest ancient mind the idea of chance was supplemented with the idea of Providence, and thus while the name was retained the notion was utterly annihilated by being dei- fied, and from the realm of shadows and the floating threads of acci- dent the mind fled away to the substantialities of a directing power and the strong cords of a divine Providence. Hence Pindar sang of what was done cvv Qeov rvxa, by the chance of God, and even the soberer Herodotus qualified rvxa with the epithet of Qeta. The universe being, and man being therein, there must be a God. We are thus led by considering man's relation to the physical universe to consider his relation to God and thus to the spiritual world. What is God? What relations does man bear to him ? These are very interesting questions, which we do not propose to preach upon, but to look at simply as the questions have bearing on the growth of our manhood. In all the theories we find one or the other of these elements : God is the creature of man or the maker of man. The former is largely common. When a French philo- sophical lecturer said at one stage of his course, " Gentlemen, I now proceed to create God," it was not very startling to his audience; but when it came to be repeated in the orthodox circles of this land it seemed revolting and blasphemous. Gentlemen, he only said he was going to do what many of us often do without the calm preliminary announcement. In their theories and in their numbers, in their discourses and in their systems of living, too 358 CHIPS AND CHUNKS many of our philosophers and poets, our lecturers and practical men are hewing out an image which they pedestal amid the altars of sacrifice and cry to their souls, " These be thy gods, O Israel ! " But they are not God ; they are not supreme over the universe of all mind and feeling, of all form and fact, although they hold a petty supremacy in the hearts that make them. Truth, the great icono- clast, levels these images. It is a terrible thing for a heart to love its God, even when that is a false god. Every human heart shrinks from atheism ; for atheism is that great vacuum which nature abhors. It is not only true that man must have a God, but it is equally true that the character of the worshiped Deity is to produce upon his own character the most prodigious modifications of which it is capable. For this very reason, in addressing a body of intellectual young men I prefer ascending from the ephemeral topics which float about them to the grand presence which perpetually and silently presses their characters to their final forms. Among the many systems in which God is presented to the ac- ceptance of man there are two which now mainly divide the intel- lectual world ; namely, Pantheism and Christology. There may be small sects and individual philosophers who object to falling into either of these classes, and yet, throwing minute differences aside, we shall find the philosophy and poetry of the world ranging them- selver under the general divisions. Let us look at them. Pantheism teaches that the whole material and intellectual world is God. It either started with this broad general proposition or worked it out by processes. This puts God entirely out of sepa- rate existence. Matter could never become mind. Matter could never be matter and not-matter at the same time. The statement to nav earl Qeog is identical with Qsog eonv ovrig. To say that the flowers and fruits, the beauties and powers of the universe, that whatever things are reportable by the senses are God, is a very fine theory for the flowers and fruits, but is destruction to the idea of God — makes us see, it may be, something more of beauty in what can be painted upon the perishable retina, a membrane which an infinitely small puncture will destroy, but takes from the soul's eye the whole view of the infinite repository of all the types of beauty and all the germs of power. It magnifies the statue and invests it FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 359 with radiance, but excludes from the conception the teeming brain of the sculptor in which the idea first stood up, and the cunning hand which practically realized and embodied that beautiful idea in substantial marble. Let us not consider this a subject of slight importance, to be thrown to the metaphysicians, the poets and the transcendental dreamers of a vain philosophy. It bears it directly upon the growth of our manhood. We cannot make any thing of a man until we can give value to his relation to God. And let us do jus- tice to every theory. It is a bad mental habit to embrace in a general damnatory formula every theory or system which does not square with our standard of orthodoxy. We must meet error, not in its weakness, but in its strength. If the Christology of our Bible be true the strongest presentment against it is Pantheism, for the reason that this system, without question, has the next claim to be considered beautiful, powerful, and consistent ; has the greatest fascination for the intellectual and is most easily comprehended and received by the masses of the uneducated. And whoso watches the waving to and fro of the branches of the trees that grow by the modern Helicon, whoso watches the wanderings of modern philoso- phy, must, I think, perceive that, in turning from the great Former of all things, Intellect is throwing itself into the arms of Nature ; the spiritual weakens, the sensuous strengthens, and the great human mind is worshiping the foot-prints and forgetting the presence of the majestic Being whose movements leave the glorious records of his passage. If Pantheism be the strongest presentation adverse to Christi- anity, the strongest form of Pantheism is that modern shape it has assumed in making man to be God. If I understand the process of the logic in this case, nothing is until it becomes something in man, as there is no color without the eye and no sound without the ear; and then, when all things have been gathered into man, man is gathered out of himself, is refined, sublimated, deified, and ex- cludes all other deity from the domain of thought and feeling. The most logical, powerful, and eloquent advocate of this theory in modern times is perhaps Feuerbach, of Germany. Let us have, in brief, the result of his close analyses ; analyses which he says he has 3 6o CHIPS AND CHUNKS subjected to the severest scrutiny, historical and philosophical. The processes we have no space for, and the results must be given shortly : On the speculative doctrine of God he holds that " God is thought cognized by us." " Man is nothing without God, but also God is nothing without man ; for only in man is God an object as God ; only in man is he God." " Faith separates God from man, consequently it separates man from man ; for God is nothing else than the idea of the species invested with a mystical form." It follows that " Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as an indi- vidual, but in his essential nature, in his species." " God is man's highest feeling of self, free from all contrarieties and disagreeables." This theory, when it comes to regard God in the light of intellect, maintains that the pure, perfect, divine nature is the self-conscious- ness of the understanding (man's understanding), the consciousness which the understanding has of its own perfection." As to the moral essence, " Love is God," which is a very different idea from that of the apostle, "God is love." Love — man's love for himself, for others, for the species — " love is the true unity of God and man, of spirit and nature," says Feuerbach ; and he adds that " love is ma- terialism ; immaterial love is a chimera." He qualifies, however, by the statement that " love is also the idealism of nature; love is also spirit, esprit." He sums up the whole in his formula " Homo homini dens est." Perhaps this critic whose mode of stating the theory we have used would object to being broadly called a Pantheist, as in one part of his writings he charges Pantheism with swallowing up man, But this theory is Pantheism seen from the other side — man swal- lowing up all things in himself. The older forms of Pantheism placed no value on the materials or the dynamics of the universe ex- cept as they found them understood by man. It matters nothing whether we take the best of all for our God, or the best of the best of all. Man is the great spokesman of Nature, the great represen- tative of things extant, and we need not bewilder ourselves with superfine distinctions. In any thought of God the physical world must have its place, and we are ready to admit that the theory now presented is the finest, highest, and most beautiful form of atheism — atheism which is the denial of a personal Creator and governor. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 361 Now, gentlemen, over against this doctrine that man is God stands Christology, the doctrine that God became man. Both rec- ognize the idea of deity. Both meet on the common ground of man's need of divine connections. But they have no other funda- mental principle in common. Christology holds that before the worlds, before the ranks and chains of beings animate and inani- mate, rational or material, there is an eternal personal existence, a being having thought and feeling and power ; that his will flowered out into the physical world ; and his will enkindled the flames of mind, and that his will endowed all other beings with their several powers and faculties. It further teaches that to achieve a grand work, to elevate the nature of man, and to accomplish his own pur- poses aside from man, this supreme Creator and governor became man, took upon him the nature of the creature he had formed, gathered on his own heart every nerve of sympathy which thrills in this sensitive creature, married his divinity to our humanity, in a manner inexplicable to us, but completely breaking down the bar- rier between us, letting man into God and God into man ; and that this God-man and man-God still lives in this union which has no divorce ; and that he has all the normal feelings of God and all the normal feelings of man. He is the visible God. Who looks on him sees man, and whoso looks on him beholds God. The object of this discourse is to inculcate the theory that the only right and full development of our manhood must take its base upon the doctrine of Christology and draw its life and power there- from, and that the Pantheistic doctrines, the very best after the Christian, are wholly unable to give us either starting-place or im- petus for growth. We lay against Pantheism, however stated, these objections : I. It has no Personal God. There is no noumenon not dependent upon phenomenon. There is no starting-point of existence, no be- ginning-place of life and thought for man. There is no Being to address in prayer. What do men gain to their minds and hearts who address the god that is the universe, the god that is the human species? Simply a grand rhetorical figure — a larger prosopopoeia; but they speak to ears that have no tympanum, they parade the sores of their wounded hearts to eyes that have no retina, and they pour 362 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the doleful cadences of their lamentations upon a heart that has no sympathy. From the temple of this ideal god they return without consolation and without a benediction, except such vain and insuffi- cient solace as their natural stretching out toward an ideal god forces up from the depths of their own spirits. But it is because the wells of our hearts are either too shallow or too dry that we seek for another, for one having greater depths of being in himself, for one who can give us protection because he is higher than we. To feel the direness of this defect, go ponder the apostrophes which heart-wants have wrung from genius, from the days when the Grecian bards told the achings of the spirit on the harps of old down to the sorrowful sobs which fill the notes of Shelley's exquisite poem " Alastor." Mountains the loftiest, forests the grandest, streams the most beautiful, light that paints all, distance lending enchantment, worlds upon worlds in trooping procession, may en- rich the imagination, but they are meaningless all — all disconnect and lessonless, all crowded with riddles that puzzle and mysteries that confound, until their Lord and Master appear ; and then these impersonalities that seem like lost children, clinging together be- cause they are lost, suddenly show themselves to be ministers of his, moving at his bidding, and waiting at his throne. And they all, having nothing to say of themselves, when he, the personal Crea- tor, appears, break into the adoration Ao%a gov, 6 Seoc rj^av, doga gov. 2. Pantheism takes no account of the origin of man. It assumes him, reasons upon him, makes a god of him, but does not say whence he is or whether he be eternal. It can never satisfy itself about him. At one time he is a drop, swallowed up in the ocean of to nav; at another all things are appearances and nothing really is but man ; all things are simply because he cognizes them, and when he no longer thinks of any thing that thing no longer is ; so that whether he made the universe or is the last effort of the universe to produce, he cannot tell. The great question Whence am If so natural to every intelligent being taking thought of the fact of its own existence, is a question to which Pantheism has never professed to have a satisfactory answer. It carries the mind back and back, until a great blank wall, higher than man's highest thought, deeper than his profoundest conjectures, blocks up all the past. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 363 3. If Pantheism has no ancient history, so it has no prophecy. It tells man nothing of his future. He is here. Where his race was a hundred years agone, where he will be a century to come, is not in- timated. Some stray breath, flitting over the surface of the great ocean of things, probably caught up the waters and fretted it to a bubble. Man is that bubble. The great sea rolls and chafes, and some vast bounding billow or some small diminishing curve will let out the breath and the bubble will be no more. Or, if the higher view be taken, and he stands with all the threads of thought and feeling in the universe knit upon his heart, he will pass away, and what will become of all his present connections he cannot even conjecture. He feels that when he shall die, and rot upon the rot- ting earth, the finest, beautifulest, and most exquisite thing will perish ; that he now is, with every capability for being very high and very glorious, and yet for him there is no platform higher than the present. Whatever stimulus to exertion the idea of immortal existence may afford Pantheism destroys. As the past is closed to investigation so is the future. In the eager longings of his soul man presses forward, and within an arm's length he finds another great wall built up before him, and whatever may be splendidly at- tractive in the future is shut out from him by a masonry of solid darkness. 4. Nor does this theory furnish any system of duty. It has no ethics. Duty is the obligation growing out of relations and en- forced by authority. But there are no relations in Pantheism. All things stand together, but they have no connection. There are disjecta membra, but no head. There are no authorities in the universe except those fatal compulsions of forces whose existence must be acknowledged, but whose final tendencies can never be ascertained. There is no one governing will. So all moral order vanishes under this system when carried to its logical termina- tions. It would seem that there must be right and wrong, and an everlasting distinction between these, and an infallible mind decid- ing all mooted questions which involve this distinction. But Pan- theism leaves all loose. Its god is the highest conception a man can have of mankind, his most elevated notions of the best quali- ties of every member of the race, combined in one, in one abstract 364 CHIPS AND CHUNKS conception ; not one person ; in a notion which has no intellect, no emotions, no will, no authority. And when is a conception high or low, there being no standard? I have never heard that ques- tion answered by the Pantheists. Does each man have a separate god ? Or, is God the highest thought of the highest man and the highest thought of the lowest man at the same time? The abandonment of a personal authoritative God involves all these difficulties. Inclination should be law under this theory, and each man's inclination being law it is not difficult to see how soon the crossing orbits will precipitate a general crash. Then where will virtue be? 5. There is no philanthropy in this system — no love for man as man. If I love my brother it is not because he is my brother, but because of whatever he holds in common with all other things. I love him as I love a wondrous gem, a fine statue, a beautiful picture, a sweet flower, or some bright particular star. The fact is, there can be no brotherhood where there is no father. The geologic formations, the constellations, are as much brothers as men and men. Now, there is nothing which, according to the general estimation, so marks and glorifies a man as the love he bears his brother man. The finest passages in the history of the race do not chronicle the successes of selfishness, but the achievements of philanthropy. And, gentlemen, it is among our instincts to love our fellow-man. Thrown upon whatever isle, surrounded by whatever beauties or horrors, the arrival of a man, of whatever man, speaking whatever language, and wearing whatever garb, is a relief and a comfort. My heart goes out to him as his comes to me, and we form a brotherhood instantly, even if it must be done by gesticulation. Moreover, a disposition to segregate one's self, to fly from the race, to seek unbroken solitudes, is an indication of insanity. Does not this stretching out of my arms toward my brother argue a per- sonal, thinking, feeling, regulating father ? And is not the absence of all stimulus to this love, of all rebuke to selfishness, of all acknowledgment of living links through the kinship of hearts, a glowing proclamation that the system of Pantheism is radically, essentially, and irremediably defective ? 6. Lastly, we urge against Pantheism that the highest poetic FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 365 element is not in it. We do this boldly in face of the fact that much of the "faculty divine " has been employed in uttering the lays of this faith. Pantheism has its domain of poetry, undoubtedly. Whatever of physical beauty can move the mind and heart may be sung by the poets who hold this theory ; but the solemn religious idea of beauty, the highest and holiest refinement of thought, is absent. If it ever appears to be present it is borrowed from Chris- tology, for if the high-sounding terms which occur in the philo- sophic poetry or poetic philosophy of Pantheism be brought to the test of the logic of the system they disappear immediately. Spirit, the finest form of existence ; kinship, the strongest tie of beings ; immortality, the first, the last, the most hungry yearning of the heart — these three exquisite, subtile, yet principal elements of poetry are not really in Pantheism. So here, upon its most vaunted ground, we meet it and boldly charge it with being most deficient in the very element on which it most plumes itself. Now, take the mighty contrast which Christianity affords, and you can no longer hesitate on which foundation to build up your man- hood. 1. Christology, in the front of all its teachings, impresses the doc- . trine of a personal God. W T e are held by no such vague notion as a God who is the " Natura naturans" — while all other existences are the "natura naturata" — a fatal power working unfeelingly/pro- ducing beauties which do not thrill it and the sensitive beings with whom it can have no sympathy, but a Being, a Spirit, having a heart to prompt, an intellect to plan, and a power to execute. It can- not be charged that the God of Christianity is, after all, a mere notion, an assemblage of the ideas of life, power, wisdom and good- ness. If it were so the reply is at hand that that is all the most scientific atheist or Pantheist knows of matter — all men acknowl- edging themselves totally ignorant of matter beyond what they know of its attributes. But Christianism does not hold out life, power, wisdom, and goodness, to be worshiped ; it presents a living, powerful, wise, good Being, as the object of worship. And this is an immense difference. If all matter should suddenly go out of existence there would be no god, according to Pantheism ; ac- cording to Christology if all the worlds should disappear and I re- 366 CHIPS AND CHUNKS mained there would be two persons in the universe, God and I, not I the god of myself, but I, belonging to, ruled by, and responsible to that other Being, between whom and myself I should recognize an infinite difference in position, but an intimate nearness of kin- ship. And then, if I should expire, God would still exist, complete in all his personality and attributes, and able, at a word, to fill all vacancy with new and beautiful worlds and new and gifted beings. Gentlemen, it is this personality of the God of Christianity which lies at the foundation of all intellectual and moral progress. Phi- losophy must have some starting-point and the affections some rest- ing-place. These are afforded by the theistic doctrine of the Bible, and by no other system. Hence the spread of Christology is the progress of philosophy. Fastening our clue upon the Deity we may penetrate the forest of matter and the labyrinth of mind and find our way back again. Thus it is that mental science has found its most successful workers among those who hold to the cross of Christ, as Bacon and Newton, Leibnitz and Locke ; not to speak of other lights in the firmament of mind. The affections are intimately connected with the operation of the intellect. The heart must have ease, if the mind is to perform its calmest, strongest, and most enduring work. And when that heart is lacerated philosophy can do nothing for it, as philosophy by its maxims cannot heal even a fleshly wound. In the doctrine of the God-man all the heart's wants of love and sympathy are supplied. The Highest stoops to the lowest and gathers every ligament of every heart upon his own. Thus the representation of a personal God, holy in his nature, creating all things by his power, sustaining all by his presence, with a heart loving man so that he delighted in his conception of man before producing him ; delights in him when produced ; loves him when all astray in intellect and all polluted in heart by reason of sin ; • loving man so as to manifest his personality in the un- mistakable attributes of a human body ; teaching him by a lofty living example, by impressive words, by all a glorious life and wondrous death for his salvation, how beautiful is holiness and how noble is philanthropy — this representation, this simple grand FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 367 system of doctrines, precisely fits every demand of humanity. On the cross of the God-man the desire of God and the needs of man have met. Strike out the personal God, and our intellect swings in the air. Strike out the personal man, and our heart swings in the air. 2. This system gives us a reasonable and satisfactory account of our origin. Whether true or false no other system does this much. The Christian representation is wholly worthy, being endowed like man. The reasonableness of our proceeding from the everlasting Father and the grandeur of our being children of the almighty Maker of the insensible yet magnificent creation, satisfy at once the demands of reason and the cravings of our spirits. The reason why we came is as lofty as our manner of coming. To send our faculties out to search the universe, to collect its treasures of beauty and sublimity ; to bind ourselves to every other man, and with self-steering power to move across the ocean of existences, bearing our freighted spirits toward Him from whom are all things and for whom are all things, how unspeakably does this transcend the Pan- theistic view of a floating drift, started for no purpose, moved by the chance influences from without, guided toward no haven, and existing for no end ! 3. Christology gives a system of ethics with infinite and everlast- ing sanctions. No other system does. This shows me my relation to God as my father and to man as my brother ; and then it brings in a new and more glorious relation — God becomes man, and sets man thus in a peculiar relation to his Maker and to his mate. Hence the whole system, and hence the whole authority of duty. Go ask your philosophers, falsely so called, the meaning of " ought " and " ought not," and they will give you a few gran- diloquent phrases which, probed to their center, are found to be heartless, and have no claim to attention except as they simulate the teachings of Christology. But those binding words gather their power to hold society together from the cross of Christ and the new order of affairs thereby inaugurated. 4. Then there is the whole force of the revelation of immortality, which belongs solely to the Christian system, coming in to dignity man's nature, to animate his spirit, and to prompt him to the very 368 CHIPS AND CHUNKS greatest possible industry in self-culture. Why should I endeavor to carry my manhood up to its highest point of development, even if it could be done on earth, when there stands over the block of marble which I am chiseling out to the full representation of my ideal a terrible apparatus which is to crush the statue as soon as I shall have brought it to perfection ? Where is the sculptor whose arm would not be paralyzed by such an arrangement as this? But, gentlemen, it is a well-ascertained fact that we never do come to our perfection here. We are workers ever onward and upward. We are students ever, and he is the humblest, wisest, and most laborious student who has had longest time and largest skill to ascertain both his defects and his capabilities. If the grave is to end all and hide all the best effort is of little worth and the most of our laborious life is worthless. But the teachings of Christianism silence these benumbing lessons of Pantheism. We live now, and we may live forever. The buds of boyhood become the blossoms of manhood, and the blooms of manhood may fetch fruit beyond this life and propagate themselves by seeds whose germs are indestructible and in a soil of exhaustless fertility. Every act becomes what the old historian wished his work to be, kttjiml eg aei, a thing for M forever." Every word goes syllabling amid the melodies that take their un- ending dances through the spiritual universe. Every record is lodged in the archives of immortal thought. This life becomes beautiful with the radiance of the life beyond and grand as the majestic infancy of an intellectual and spiritual sovereignty which shall wave its scepter when the suns, the moons, the stars, the solid masonry and the painted tapestry of this material universe shall have rolled their faded splendors down to the sepulcher of all wasted things. 5. Here we find not only the rational system of philotheopy, but the true theory and vital power of philanthropy. Every chain which can captivate my intellect and affections to my brother is forged here. Every exemplification of love for man which omnis- cience can invent and almightiness execute is found in the God- man, Christ Jesus. His incarnation the sacred book calls the epiphany of the goodness and philanthropy of God our Saviour. [Titus iii, 4, in orig.~\ Here, where we have the sublimest example FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 369 of self-abnegation for the advancement of the race, we kindle our affection for our brother and enter upon labors, which, however painful, shall carry their tide of beneficence down by every channel worn by human tears. 6. And lastly, to make the contrast complete, the poet of Chris- tianity, while he gathers from all the world the glory and beauty thereof, and thus sings in concord with the poet of Pantheism, soon leaves him on the mountain-tops and tries his own wing far out of sight, far beyond the empyrean, ranging amid, ranks and orders of spiritual beings, and making his circuit in a light not seen on sea or shore, the purple light of immortality. Whatsoever is delicate and beautiful, whatsover is lofty and grand, whosoever there be of moral sublimity, of exquisite loveliness and touching sensibility — all things fine and noble ; all things thrilling and cheering; all things purify- ing and exalting ; all things enduring as eternity, mingle in the Te Deum of the anthems of Christianity. So, then, gentlemen, with all its pretension the theory of the Pantheist fails as the glorious theory of the cross succeeds in answering every demand of man's intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic nature. Under Christology man reaches the finest culture this life can give, and then carries the processes forward amid the most favorable circumstances of a spiritual existence which is to open its fragrant morn of splendors on the dreamy eyes of death. If time allowed we might carry our examination of man's rela- tions to the interesting connections he has with the past as enrich- ing him, and to the influences he may project through all the future, thus securing to himself a double immortality ; to the rela- tion he bears to the species and the effect of mankind, the whole body of living, thinking, acting beings, upon each individual of the species. Rich as these fields are in stimulus to self-culture, they cannot be entered now. Perhaps it would have been more in accordance with the method of the times if I had sought to excite you with reasons which lie within the circle of a refined selfishness, by all those stimulants which trade and ambition supply. But they have sufficient elo- quence to plead their own cause ; and I have been willing to lay myself open to the charge of dullness amid circumstances which 3 ;o CHIPS AND CHUNKS would seem to demand brilliance if I could but help any youth among you to find a sufficient basis for a lofty character. To that end I have led you away from the urgency of these busy, rest- less times to the highest themes suited to the calmest moments of your most tranquil self-investigation. Gentlemen, it is to be presumed that each of you desires in some sense to be a philanthropist. If so, this indicates at once the highest cast of character in yourselves and the noblest purposes to- ward your race. I come to each of you with the earnest exhorta- tion that he strive to make himself a man, in all the highest, widest, noblest meaning of that term. Believe me, younger brother, the very best benefit you can confer upon your race is to present in yourself the finest possible specimen of nobly-developed humanity. Lured by the phosphorescence of false systems you may waste your time and your energies and do no other good than carcasses at the mouth of a monster's cave, warning the traveler to go in haste past the spot where you fell- But if you will recognize the per- petual presence of the Maker of the universe; if you penetrate yourself with the feeling of your responsibility to him ; if you will remember that the tie which binds you to the universal Father is that which binds you also to your fellow-men ; if you will feel that every act you perform is, by its performance, rendered immortal and projected into eternity; if you will energize your spirits, not by the contemplation of the classic grandeur of Promethean agony and endurance, but by the holier, the more humane, the more god-like, the more transforming vision of Him who drank the drugged cup of human sorrow on the cross of shame, you shall grow to the fullness of the perfect stature of manhood. My friends and brothers, I have been a dreamer just like you. The labors and sorrows of life have aroused me to the stern wants of my spirit. I have lingered by the founts of song and followed philosophy by the shadow of its trailing robes through aisles of sacred groves, and I have listened to the voice of more than one Ancient Mariner, and am thus a sadder and I hope a wiser man. From the fierce conflicts of life, from the heavy cares of my position, I have turned aside — how gladly ! — to say to you with all the earnestness of my nature that there is no worthy manhood FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 37 1 which does not know its relations to God, its fellows, and its future. I have come to tell you that he can never become a philanthropist, a lover of his brother, who has never become a lover of his God. I have come to tell you that before you can become a saviour in any sense to others you must in some sense have suffered a cruci- fixion. All the great have trod this terrible pathway before you. All the great have found that between the baptism of fire which set them apart for their work and their final ascension to the stupen- dous rewards of eternity there lay Gethsemane's dread agony and Cal- vary's crown of thorns. These you cannot escape. But then comes the glorious exaltation ; then comes the initiation into the grand society of the celestial philanthropists, and every bloody foot-print you leave behind you on the pilgrimage of beneficence shall grow brighter and brighter with the ages, and the long procession of toil- ing generations coming after you shall fall down and kiss the spots made radiant by your painful pioneering, and bless the men who through humiliation and suffering have led the way to everlasting dignity and joy. Let us be men — men such as God thought of when he first spoke of our creation ; and living such, and dying such, when we ascend the higher spheres the sons of God who shouted for joy when we were made shall render homage to the manhood Jesus wore and which we have not disgraced; and, when our spirits rush back to the embrace of our everlasting Father, angels and God will be glad that ever, amid the grand utterances of eternity, JEHO- VAH said : " Let us make man ! " SUCCESS IN LIFE. [Abstract of a Lecture delivered to the Students of the University of the City of New York, 1886."] In common with all other young men, students consciously or unconsciously set before themselves a goal which they call " success in life." Nor, if it be properly placed, is the running toward that goal to be condemned on grounds of morals or despised on grounds of philosophy. The success of individuals is the success of nations, and the success of nations is the success of the race ; and certainly 24 372 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the universe points toward success as being the final end. It is, therefore, very reasonable and very proper that young men should inquire into the elements of success. In pointing these out I have nothing novel to announce, as I have made no discoveries; I have only seen what all thoughtful observers must have seen : that there are five things that enter largely into the making of a successful life for any man. First, there is integrity. The man must be quite sure that his life has been unbroken by the bribes of the world, and the com- munity about him must believe that he is incorruptible. He must settle certain principles, and to these principles he must adhere through all phenomenal loss and gain. He must believe that the greatest gain there is on earth is less important than his settled moral principles. So he must be ready to live and die by them, absolutely unshaken by the storms of fate. He must neither dread nor avoid great tests, nor must he despise or seek small tests of incorruptibility. A man who holds to his integrity can scarcely be supposed to be perpetually remembering that he is incorruptible ; but in college and in counting-house and in society men are con- stantly subjected to the small tests, and intelligent observers of char- acteristics notice those testings and remember them. For instance, in my boyhood Nicholas Biddle was President of the United States Bank, and probably at that time the most influ- ential man in Philadelphia and one of the most influential men in the country. In the employ of the bank was a clerk who had dis- charged his duties with exemplary fidelity. Six days he would work, but the seventh day he held himself bound to observe as Sab- bath. There was an old mother to support, and from his slender salary there had been no very great savings. One Saturday Mr. Biddle assigned him work which would cany him over his Sabbath hour. He respectfully declined, but expressed his willingness to work until twelve o'clock on Saturday night and resume at twelve o'clock Sunday night. His adherence to this determination lost him his place. It seemed very cruel that in the service of God he should be brought to this suffering. In a few weeks his little sav- ings began to come to their end. The prospect before his beloved mother weighed heavily on his heart. At that juncture a new FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 373 financial project arose in Philadelphia, the leader of which went to Mr. Biddle to secure the nomination of a man whom the syndicate could thoroughly trust with every cent of their money. To the surprise and delight of the discharged clerk Mr. Biddle nominated him as a man who would starve rather than do wrong. To this modern instance was added the example from the most ancient literature, the account found in the book of Job ii, 1-10 [which was freely commented upon as showing how the nature of true men, that of devilish tempters, and that of Mephistophelian critics, has been unchanged through the centuries]. No class has been in college two years, no men have been in business five years, whose standards of right and wrong are not well known among their acquaintances. But whatever any man may have, in any sphere, of any real gifts, of any apparent graces, without the foundation of integrity the whole superstructure will fall. The second element of success is intelligence. This may be taken to mean both the capability of learning and the learning acquired. All knowledge is power, even the most superficial knowledge. Some Irish laborers were striving to move a great weight of stone. There came by a specimen of that wonderful evolution of modern times which we call the dude. This little creature, with legs not much larger than his cane, and one glass in one eye, as he tripped along saw these great fellows working at the mass they wished to displace. He had happened — in the New York University or elsewhere — to have learned something about mechanical principles. So, without removing his dainty glove from his little fingers, and while holding his cane in his left hand, he simply took the crow-bar and so adjusted it as to give it the leverage which enabled him to throw the huge stone out of place with one hand. The man who wishes to succeed must try to succeed in some one line. A man may have the most general information and be a failure in every thing he undertakes. He must not only be quick to see where his knowledge is wanted, but he must have the knowledge that is then and there wanted, and that is the real intelligence that gives success. The third element of success is energy. To several persons has 374 CHIPS AND CHUNKS been attributed the saying, ''impossible is the adjective of fools." But whoever said it, and whether it be exactly true or not, we all do know that there is something in men which can be cultivated ; a something which carries them forward ; a something which keeps a soldier marching when comrade after comrade has dropped at his side ; which keeps many a swimmer's head above water while he pulls for the shore ; a something which is not fanaticism, nor even enthu- siasm, and certainly is not passion. No young man can fail to see the difference between a free Alexander, knowing just how to place the head of Buchephalus to the sun and having the courage to leap on the back of his famous steed, and Mazeppa bound upon a horse he cannot control, but which carries him through bush and bramble and forest and flood. The one is the type of energy, the other is the representation of a man who by the cords of his habits is bound to the steed of his passions. It is not the blustering braggart that is the man of energy — his energy is worthless — but the man who has steady push, that pushes and pushes and pushes till something gives way. If only by enthusiasm, by fanaticism, by passion, he had been started on his career, he never would have pushed through all obstacles of his case and his time and have had his immortal reward. The fourth element is industry. It is very easy to make mistakes as to this. There are young men going through college who appear to be the very busiest, and certainly are the very fussiest men in the classes. It is wonderful how they seem to work — how many engagements they have, how many plans — and yet when the year's end has come there is nothing gained, nothing done. It has been nothing but restless indolence. True industry is systematic devotion to useful pursuits. What may be useful at one time of life is cer- tainly not always useful at another. It may be very useful in vacation to be shooting, boating, and riding ; these things are certainly not very useful in term-time. If any of the young men of the university go into mercantile business it will certainly not be very useful for them while so engaged to spend twelve hours a day studying the ancient classics and the higher mathematics, useful as that course may be in college. That which does me the most good now is the use- ful thing to me, and if a man is to succeed in college and after college FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 375 he must be a man of industry. Fools dream of luck while wise men work. Genius is the talent for holding one's self to one's work. There is a fifth element of success especially to be considered by young men. We shall call it economy, but the word must be under- stood in its classic sense. In the lower ordinary sense it is a valuable thing. We Americans have despised economy ; we thought it was mean. Our custom has been to go to a hotel in a foreign country and ask for the best rooms regardless of price. No matter what may be a young man's income in his own right, or his allowance from his parents or guardian, it behooves him to see not a dollar of it is wasted. It shows bad mental endowments or training when a man wastes any thing, no matter how much of it he may have. But you are asked to think of economy in its original, which is the noblest meaning: the laying out of a mans whole life as one furnishes a house, the management of all a man's income in outlay as one runs a household. That will of course include his furniture, his dress, his habits, private and public, his amusements, and his inter- course with his fellow-students and society. How to get the most out of his money, out of his dress, out of his time, out of his life — that is a man's economy. A traveler starts on his journey with a good store of food along a road where there are places where he can certainly find something to eat. Beyond a certain point he knows not whether there is any thing or not. Now, plainly, it is poor economy for the traveler to eat up his whole stock and neglect to purchase while he is passing the holstelries on the road — which may lead him through a desert before the journey ends. A man who uses the grandest economies in his life, whether that man be rich or poor, will not be forgetful of the past ; will not mis- use the present ; will take into consideration all the future, so far as practicable, without being frightened or misled by it. A man will study his seconds of time and his pennies of money, and seek to get only a dollar's worth for a dollar, but a whole dollar's worth for that. Now, those of us who agree upon these five points as indisputable factors in a successful life will please observe that this structure is to be raised upon some basis of philosophy. It is to be built upon a philosophy whose basis is that there is nothing but nature ; 376 CHIPS AND CHUNKS that in matter, and in matter alone, is the existence of whatever is seen, and the promise and potency of all things whatsoever. If not upon this then upon the other philosophy which, involves the super- natural. In other words, upon materialism or religion. Carefully examine whether incorruptibility of character can be maintained by a belief in a philosophy which forbids all conception of the greatness of heroism and the despicability of unmanliness, giving to these two no more virtue nor vileness than it gives of the one to the mountain and of the other to the cess-pool. Consider whether you can maintain your integrity by believing that there is no other integrity to the human spirit than that which belongs to the yet unbroken rock. Consider whether a better basis is not that religion which makes virtue immortal, something that cannot be swallowed up in any floods or lost in any cataclysms of the universe. Try intelligence on the basis of materialism, and of either Juda- ism or Christianity, both of which have the basis of supernatural religion. Suppose I can acquire the knowledge of Von Humboldt, and know that that can only serve me down to the death-day, and can only serve my successors down to that time when the cooling processes of the universe shall have frozen them out of sentient existence — have I such a support to the cultivation and furnishing of my intellect as supernatural religion affords me, which offers to put an immortalizing touch both on the spirit that gathered the riches of knowledge and the wealth acquired? Passion is a great power, but a very temporary power ; but that is, perhaps, all that materialistic philosophy can allow. Faith, a faith which is not only " the substance of things hoped for," but is just as much evidence to the spirit of the existence of things not seen as the impression upon the retina is to the brain of things that are seen. This faith that takes hold of the future, the future of unend- ingness, is not this faith, instead of being an occasional stimulant, a perpetual healthy tonic to the soul ? If a man can save nothing, if the whole universe is to go down and out, how can he maintain devotion to any pursuit, and how can any pursuit a long time seem useful ? If the whole loom is to drop down at nightfall how can I all day keep plying the shuttle? But if the woof of my daily life is to be shot through the web of that FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. ^>77 which is unseen and eternal have I not such a basis for industry as no other philosophy affords ? Is life worth living? It depends upon what you mean by life and by living. If by life you mean the end that comes at the grave, and if by living you mean such an outlay to save every portion of time and opportunity as has been described in economy, then, prob- ably, no. But if life be the beginning of life that never ends, then, certainly, yes. I have presented these views feeling that if there be but one world success is better insured thereon by bringing to bear upon that world the power of that other world which may not exist ; but, believing as I do, in both worlds as parts of a great whole, I have no hesita- tion in expressing my opinion upon this subject. Start in the fresh- man class of this year a score of young men, ten of whom in brawn and brain and weight, and other physical endowments, are equally matched with ten others, and let these latter ten enter upon their career with a fixed and earnest faith in both the natural and super- natural, in the world that now is and the world that is to come, and let the other ten have an equally strong conviction that there is no such thing as that we call the supernatural, and it will not be difficult to predict which set of men in the university, and beyond, shall out- strip the other. A priori, we should suppose it to be so ; a posteriori, the history of careers has shown it to be so. THE GREAT CENTENNIAL LESSON. [Written May, 1889.] The whole country has been stirred with glowing accounts of a naval, military, and civic celebration in the city of New York, in which on the second day the march of eleven miles of soldiery, in- cluding the President of the United States, and the governors of many of the States, was witnessed by over a million of people from every State in the Union, and probably from every country on the planet. As a pageant it was splendid, probably it was unequaled by any thing ever seen anywhere, at any time, in any place. The specta- cle has passed away and all its visible glory melted like a rainbow 378 CHIPS AND CHUNKS or an aurora borealis. Has it given us any thing valuable? In my opinion it has left what will more than repay all the money, time, and labor expended to make it the brilliant success it was. It has given us a moral and patriotic education which will be felt through- out the United States down to the next Centennial celebration. It has assisted mightily in cultivating that which is most lack- ing in American character, namely, reverence. Millions of great and little people have been taught to look up toward one of their fellow-beings with mingled affection and awe. They have learned that he stands out not only the leading American, but the leading man of the race. More people now living know his name, and count him above every other soldier and ruler, than they do any other human being who ever drew a sword or discharged an official func- tion. Even to play with his memory is felt to partake of blasphemy, and the coarse buffoonery of a few attempts of an occasional jour- nal to connect jest with his character and history has been shock- ing even to those whose sensibilities are not acute. The whole nation seems to love him as much as a man so lofty and dead so long can be loved by human hearts. Now the question occurs : " What has made this growth of rev- erence and love for George Washington ? " It is not any thing he has said, or written, or done. He never said so wise and great a thing that it has not been surpassed in its wit and wisdom by some other speaker. He never wrote what will probably be re- membered when the writings of other men have been forgotten. He did no wonderfulest thing ; he gained no wonderfulest battle. He was not half as " smart " as Aaron Burr, nor had he half the genius of Alexander Hamilton, nor was he a hundredth part so great a politician as John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. And yet far above them all he towers. They are where they were about a hun- dred years ago, and he is ten times loftier and more massive in the sight of men than he was the day he was inaugurated the first President of the United States. Of no merely human being, one hundred years after an event in his history, have there ever been as many portraits made as have been produced of George Washington in the last three months. Of no other mere man have so many noble, admiring, inspiring things been said and written as were FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 379 written and spoken of George Washington in the month of April, 1889. There is probably no language in which his praise is not uttered. The question recurs : " What has made this growth of reverence and love for George Washington ? " The simple answer is — his character, formed on the type and preserved by the principles of the Christian religion. His was an age of infidelity. The leading infidel nation upon earth was the brightest, and had such influence that its tongue was the language of courts and of polite society, and that nation was the best friend of America. Voltaire had been dead only ten years, and Diderot in France was declaring that be- lief in a God was proof of intellectual imbecility. It was at such a time, and when distinguished Frenchmen were with his army, that at the surrender of the British at Yorktown General Washing- ton's orders concluded with the words ; " Divine service shall be performed to-morrow in the different brigades and divisions. The commander-in-chief recommends that all the troops that are not upon duty do assist at it with a serious deportment and that sensi- bility of heart which the recollection of the surprising and particular interposition of Providence in our favor claims ." In his subsequent address to the governors of the different State's he made eight distinct references to a superintending Providence. These are the last words of that address : " It remains, then, to be my final and only request, that your excellency will communicate these sentiments to your Legislature at their next meeting, and that they may be regarded as the legacy of one who has ardently wished, on all occasions, to be useful to his country, and who, even in the shade of retirement, will not fail to implore the divine benediction upon it. I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the State over which you preside in his holy protection ; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination ; . . . and finally that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to de- mean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the divine Author of our blessed religion, without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation." 33o CHIPS AND CHUNKS He accompanied his resignation of his command of the armies of the United States by an address in which he says : " I consider it an indispensable duty to close this solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to his holy keeping." On the 30th of April, 1789, General Washington became President Washington. In his inaugural address he said : " It would be pe- culiarly improper to omit in this, my first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of the nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect," etc. And at the close of the address he repaired to the church and publicly worshiped God as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. This Centennial celebration has given occasion to refresh the memory of the nation in regard to that faith which was the cement of the great parts of Washington's character, holding them to- gether in a massive structure. It is impossible to conceive that George Washington could have been as great a man as he was, and be wielding such influence as he still does, if he had not been a Christian. Let our young men ponder what he would have been if his character had been formed on the doctrine of materialism, or of positivism, or of so-called humanitarianism. He would now be ab- solutely unfelt among the moral forces of the race. If he had ac- cepted the teachings offered our young men by Mr. Robert G. Ingersoll he might have been a Robespierre ; but what moral influ- ence does Robespierre exert this day in which George Washington is holding the attention and improving the character not only of men but of nations? No; if George Washington be worth any thing Ingersollism is contemptibly worthless. If " Bob Ingersoll " be true then George Washington is a sham and a lie. Who dares assert that? Moreover, Washington stands guardian over the interests of his country. No President can bravely do what he believes to be right without being sustained and comforted by feeling that he has the lofty companionship and the sublime approval of George Washing- ton. No high official can yield himself to the dictation of cliques, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 381 "shysters/' "boodlers," " repeaters," and all the hungry horde of men to whom politics is a business, without feeling that all the parade and pride of this Centennial, all its multitudes and thunders, are folding down upon his conscience the disapproval of the one man whose disapproval, next to that of God, men felt to be in his day, and still feel to be the deepest damnation that mortals can endure this side the awards of eternity. These are some of the lessons the Centennial emphasizes. Let them be repeated every-where ; so shall the nation grow in virtue, and the prayers of George Washington, the Father of his Country, shall be answered. 382 CHIPS AND CHUNKS RUTH AND I. SYMPATHY WITH JOY. There is scarcely need of more homily or exhortation teaching us sympathy with sorrow and inciting us thereunto. For years and years that has been urged upon us ; and all sorts of ways of show- ing it have been invented. The very names of scores of benevolent institutions keep before our eyes a catalogue of human sorrows. In our great cities we are fairly exhausted by the drafts made upon our sympathies by the wretchedness of so many of our fellow-men. As the head of a large church, which by its name, " Church of the Strangers," lays on its pastor not only the care of hundreds of mem- bers, many of whom have the sorrows of the poor, and some of whom have the miseries of the rich, but also the perplexities and sufferings of multitudes of strangers, some days I am so devital- ized by the outgoes of my sympathy, that often when the dinner hour arrives I have scarcely sufficient strength to whisper a " grace." Last week it was flashed upon me that I did not sympathize enough with the world's joys. It came thus. I had been rebuking myself for not feeling enough, perhaps, for some particular case. Such pulls had been made upon my heart that I feared I was becom- ing bankrupt of true Christian sympathy. So I fled to Ruth. You do not know who Ruth is? Well, that does not matter so long as I know. The name tells you she is not a man. I laid the case before her. And this is the way she held forth on the subject: " No ; you do yourself no injustice when you charge yourself with lack of sympathy. That is one of your defects of character." It was rather hard to hear that from her lips. You see, I was sore, and expected a little bit of cooling cream of kindness to be laid on my heart. Instead of that Ruth gave me a small slice of the judgment-day. " Why, Ruth, how can you say that? You know the hours and days I spend in relieving when I can, and sympathizing when I can- not relieve, the sufferings of so many, so many of whom are so ■' '- ■r L*. RUTH AND FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 383 ungrateful that for ten years there has never been a slur on me in the newspapers or elsewhere which, when traced, has not been found to have originated with some who, having had my sympathy and help, had turned on me because I could not do more." "True, O king," said Ruth, " but your defect is a want of sym- pathy with the pleasures and joys of others. You are quick enough to detect lurking painfullness in every eye that meets yours, and I perceive that you are at once casting about how to succor, but you do not care for any one who is happy. Your whole life shows me that you are unsympathizing on one whole side of your nature, and to one whole class of your fellow-men. So soon as one becomes happy you strike him from your book. He is one of your ' dis- charged patients.' You must remember the case of Mrs. Hurse, of Georgia, one of Dr. Marion Sims's patients. Whenever she was in New York, through the long years of her suffering, you were assid- uous in your attentions, and from all you said of her, I really thought you were fond of her; and yet when you met her upon her recovery you were quite cool to her, and she says that you went so far as to exclaim, 'O, you were the sick Mrs. Hurse. I took a great interest in that'lady,' and left her feeling that as she no longer had claims on your sympathy on account of sufferings, she ceased to have any claims at all. You recollect that you nearly spoilt your pulpit clothes with dust from the plaster of Paris in Dr. Sayre's office while you assisted in the treatment of a small boy with a spinal curvature, hold- ing him and exerting yourself to interest him while the investiture was going on; but perhaps you forget that when the Fanford chil- dren had an entertainment and wanted you to join in the fun you failed to be present, although you love them so much and they love you so much ; and you went elsewhere on the ground that they were rich and happy ! Now, does not your whole life show that you have not sufficient sympathy with joy?" You see, when Ruth talks after that fashion naturally I become serious. Ruth is not malignant, and does not triumph over the one she has thrown. But her surgical instruments are not idle when they should be in use, nor does she ever stop half way in an oper- ation. After a pause she proceeded : " Moreover, you are a Christian preacher. You have been unduly 384 CHIPS AND CHUNKS complimented for the pains you take in reading the sacred Script- ures. Bishops, college professors, and others have praised you for that. But, as I have heard you in church, I have discovered that your reading is very defective, because your heart is in only a por- tion of the word. You once said that you had devoted at least four hours to the study of the first few verses of the Gospel by St. John, in order that you might learn how to read that passage, and were still not satisfied with your rendering. But have you ever devoted ten minutes to learning how to read the injunction, ' Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep ? ' I know you have not. The ' weep with them that weep ' you repeat in a way that might draw tears from our eyes, but the first part is slurred. You know that you do not obey that point of the injunction, and so you repeat it like a parrot or an ordinary clergyman of the Estab- lished Church of England." I think Ruth felt relieved, but I didn't. The last little hit had its force in the fact that she had heard me deplore the dreadful manner in which the superb ritual of the Church of England is usually ren- dered by its clergy. But she led me to search my heart, and the result was that I confessed judgment. Now, reader, let us have a little friendly chat. In this particular are you not as bad as I am ? Are we not both much more sympa- thetic with sorrows than with joys, more sorry to hear that our neigh- bor's baby is dead than we were glad to hear that it was born, more grieved to hear that a dear friend had lost $10,000 than we were glad to hear that he had gained $20,000 ? As Christians, are we not more dejected by the fall of one church-member than rejoiced by the con- version of ten sinners ? I put the case that way to Ruth. " Yes," said she, " it is a fact. We are all more or less at fault in this matter. I hit myself by every blow I aimed at you. And what is more, we all increase this faultiness in one another by a trick we have of telling our sorrows and concealing our joys, parading our losses and hiding our gains. We presume that only the former are fit subjects of sympathy. And what a mistake that is ! " Perhaps the secret is in that fact. So many letters come to me asking me to secure gifts or loans, giving pitiful accounts of oppress- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 385 ive loads the family are carrying, and reciting harrowing stories of suffering. Now, I want to be cultivated on the other side. I want 1,250 genuine letters telling me of debts paid, mortgages lifted, maid- ens married, babes born, suits gained, patients recovered, clouds dis- persed, sunlight restored, in fact, every kind of joyful news, that I may learn to rejoice with those who rejoice, and have sympathy with happiness — 1,250 " hurrah " and " hallelujah " letters, so that I may cease being the lop-sided Christian I now appear in the eyes of Ruth and, perhaps, also in the eyes of my divine Master. "THE WORLD OWES ME A LIVING." What Ruth Said to the Tramp. If you ever have heard any one make a remark to the effect that he is the world's creditor, you might do him a service by reading him what Ruth said to a tramp. I report it to you as nearly as I can repeat it. Looking at him with her steady and serene eyes she said the following, or "words of that tenor: " " How old are you? Are you not over twenty ? Can you eat three meals a day and sleep seven hours at night? Have you not been able to make your own decent living by lawful labor? Then you are not fit to live. The world would gain nothing by supporting you. You do not pay for your place. If you were buried your carcass would at least enrich a small portion of the soil of the planet. For you to live is the world's loss, for you to die would be the world's gain. Does that sound severe ? Perhaps it does. But it is true, and there is apostolic authority for it. " You must rid yourself of the idea that you are the world's cred- itor. The exact contrary is true. Every man is born the world's debtor. Science and religion unite to teach us that. A man comes into the world an organism propagated from another organism which is one of a series that has been in the world for centuries. His being born human starts him in life a debtor to humanity, as his being born into the world starts him a debtor to the world. Through infancy the debt is increased by every drop of milk he draws from his mother's breast and by every breath of air he inhales. Suppose accounts are kept. He is charged with all he receives and credited with all 386 CHIPS AND CHUNKS he does to improve the world. When he reaches a day in which he fairly does for the world what pays for his board, lodging, and clothes, he balances the account for that day. Each day in which he does more than pay his way, that much 'more' goes toward liquidating the account run up against him up to the day he becomes self-sup- porting. Let any man make up such an account fairly and then see how he stands. " If a man has been supported twenty years before making his own living, he must afterward support himself and one other person twenty years before his account with the world is even square. Nothing can go to his credit until he has done more than that. " Let us see what ' the world ' has done for us. Before we came into it it had built houses and roads, made books, pictures, and stat- uary, invented and worked innumerable machines, tested, and rejected or retained, forms of civilization, organized communities, and — what had it not done? We entered upon all these things, paying nothing for them. Each man is bound to leave the estate improved. Each man is debtor to the world until he has done this; and he who dies without doing this dies a bankrupt ; and it is a generous world if it give his remains space for interment. " Friend, go in humility and begin to pay your debt to the world out of the assets of your youth and brains and muscle." Having overheard this harangue, when I met Ruth, I said : " Well, you were quite plain and frank in your address to your visitor." "What visitor?" asked Ruth, with that very peculiar look in her eyes which is so sweetly exasperating. "The tramp you spoke to so loudly in the hall this morning." Ruth put on her far-away look, as if she were trying to recall some- thing. " O, I didn't say any thing particularly to the tramp. I had to speak loud, because I was addressing a much respected friend who was out of sight." " Who in the world was that, Ruth ? " " A gentleman, a reverend gentleman, who I knew was standing at the library door at the head of the stairs, and who could make much better use of it than the man whom I saw while I talked, although I hope it will help even him." FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 387 u Now, see here, Ruth, how am I to make any use of your address ? You know that I really suffer from a sense of my indebtedness to the world and my seeming inability to discharge the debt, and that I never forget my obligation to all the thinkers and workers who have preceded me to the glorious company of the apostles, to the goodly fellowship of the prophets, to the whole army of martyrs, and to all others who have beaten plain the paths to heaven for my poor feet. How can you apply your harangue to me?" " Be just, my friend," said Ruth, " if you will not be generous. Is it kind to call my few remarks an ' harangue ? * It is not just to say I ' apply ' them to you. I simply suggested that you could ' make better use of them ' than the transient visitor." "How?" " By being just as frank and plain some Sunday in an address to the ecclesiastical tramps, loungers, and lazy-bones who belong to your church or visit your service every Sunday. You must know, there are communicants in the Church who feel all the while that they are creditors and the Church debtor ; that the Church owes them a comfortable pew in an elegant edifice, with the environment of superior music and eloquent preaching. Make them see that they are the debtors ; that for holy fathers and saintly mothers, for early Christian nurture, for training to holiness, for conviction of sin and instruction to salvation, for the means of grace and for the hope of glory, they are under a magnificent obligation which can never be dissolved, and which can only be partially acknowledged by the devo- tion of their lives to the interests of the Church in holy living. What is their poor pitiful tithe of money toward paying this debt? If a man should give me ten thousand dollars out of love, and I should give one thousand of it toward helping some work he had at heart, should I consider that he ' owed ' me any thing for that? You may depend upon it that people's ideas about creditor and debtor have been dislocated, and I want you to ' set ' them." Here Ruth ended and I began. 25 388 CHIPS AND CHUNKS "CUI BONO?" A Letter to Ruth by the Pastor of the Church of the Strangers. Dear RUTH : Last week I was talking with a lady who is vener- able in years, gifted in intellect, honored in social life, and influential with her pen. Our conversation ran upon certain things she had in hand and certain other things in which I was interested. In the course of the conversation she frequently drooped her noble head, and, looking at the floor, murmured, "Cui bono?" Yes, she mur- mured the question rather than propounded it. This she did so frequently that at last it arrested my attention and recalled to me the fact that I had often used the same phrase. Then I began to make a rapid analysis of the old Latin question and the motives which ordinarily lead to the asking thereof. It would seem to be in the spirit of a respect for practical good sense. It would seem to be intended to put a check to the indulgence of chimerical schemes and the undertaking of visionary projects. When I myself have used it I think it has been with a feeling of a kind of superiority to the person to whom the question was propounded. He wants to do something. I ask him, "Cui bono?" To what good end? What is the use? In the course of the conversation alluded to I said to the lady : " What is the use of the useful, anyhow ? Must there always be a 'bonum ? ' Cannot something be done that shall be fair, high, holy, godly, without the 'bonum ? ' " She smiled, and the matter dropped there. But, coming into my quiet study, the question, its meaning, and the motives of the asking, have come to me afresh, and I have thought it worth while to pay some little attention to it. Have I not often asked the question just to transfer responsibility from my shoulders to the shoulders of some energetic person who wanted to do something at a moment when my desire was to do nothing ? Is it really ordinarily asked with the desire of ascertaining if in the proposition there be any thing in which / can take part ? Do I not rather desire that the man on the other side shall be able to prove that in his proposition there is so much good as to bind me to co-operation ? And if he cannot easily and clearly do that do I not consider myself released ? FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 389 Then I asked myself the question, What is meant by "good?" To that question there might a very great variety of answers. Do I really know what ■ the Latin "bonum " and the Anglo-Saxon " good " is ? Can I not find out by looking into literature ? Junius tells us that in the Codex Argentius "good" is every-where used through the Anglo-Saxon in the sense of the Latin "bonum" Whence he infers that "goth " is taken from the Greek " agathos." Then, again, there are others who take it from the Latin " gaudeo." When the Anglo-Saxon " godian " is defined in the old dictionaries the Latin equivalents given signify to delight, to profit, to make better, etc. But plainly " better " is the comparative of " good." Do these not, however, point to the significations ordinarily given to the word "good?" One man considers that "good" which makes him happier; another man considers that " good " which makes him richer in material wealth ; another man considers that "good " which enables him to be more useful to his fellow-men. It is thus seen that the word may be used to convey the idea of either selfishness or unselfishness. So it will come to pass that what shall be considered "good " by one man will not be held to be " good " by another. Moreover, when I ask the question, "Cui bono ? " my hearer may turn upon me and say, " What do you mean by that ? Good to you,. or good to me ? " But in almost every case the suggestion is that the accomplished thing must be really feasible, capable of being taken into account, or, as we say, practicable because practical. Now all this is very well, and may be very useful if not run into the extreme. Our age is growing more and more practical in every department of human life and exertion. May we not carry this to such an excess as to turn our " good " into " bad " ? our "bonum " into "malum " t Are there not some things right to do, and to do without regard to consequences — things that ought to be done for their own sake ? Things which may seem to stand isolated among the causes and effects of society? That they are not so isolated every thoughtful man knows. But does it not give us a real thrill of enthusiasm and delight when some illogical, uncalculating, free, splendid, and superb soul springs before us and does some grand thing regardless of consequences, not calculating results, not striving 390 CHIPS AND CHUNKS to get any profit for himself or for his fellow-men, but does the good thing for the goodness that is in itself? Do not such persons and such deeds go far to break in upon the dreariness of the utili- tarian spirit, and beget another spirit which will make men do more good for others by frequently doing the good thing for the good thing's own sweet sake ? Dear Ruth, tell me what you think of these things. Yours faithfully. RUTH ON "EVIL UNSELFISHNESS." I was looking over a recent number of the London Spectator, which was lying on her table, when Ruth entered the room. " Have you seen that article on ' Evil Unselfishness?' " she said. I replied that I had just glanced at it, and asked her if she had read it. " Yes," she replied ; " I took it up because of its title, thinking it might present some views which I have held for some time. Fun- damentally it does, but it gives illustrations very different from those which had occurred to me. To show that there may be evil unselfishness it gives an account of the suicide of a Mr. Lowe, who arranged a sensational drama and carried it out, the end being his self-destruction, whereby he expected to transfer fourteen thousand pounds to his family and creditors. Nov/ here was an attempt at a colossal robbery, accompanied by the supreme crime of suicide ; all the privation and suffering were Mr. Lowe's, and were planned by him, to be endured by him, not at all for himself, but for other people. If you will run your eye over the article you will see that there are several other cases mentioned, some of which are historical. Now," added Ruth, " I have thought that sometimes we have been very indiscriminate in our praise of unselfishness, and that the mis- take was made in supposing that every unselfish act was therefore a virtuous act, and that the general disposition of unselfishness is saintly, if not angelic. I am quite ready to admit, with you theo- logians and other good folk, that self-suppression maybe a very sub- lime thing, but I am not ready to admit that it must always be so* I believe that it may often be quite otherwise. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 39 1 " When I was at boarding-school I had occasion to make some studies in this department. There were girls that were very un- selfish ; there were girls that were very selfish ; and there were girls of a neutral tint, so to speak, or, as I should say, with a fair balance between self-love and general benevolence. I observed that those unselfish girls did no good ; that the selfish girls perpetually im- posed upon them in study, in play, in school-room, in bed-room, on pleasure-trips. And I noticed that the few girls who were well balanced had actually both a more comfortable time for themselves and more power of doing good to the rest of the girls. If you had time I could tell you quite long stories of all their doings, which would illustrate this. And I made up my mind that if ever I be- came a teacher — which honor, alas ! never came to me — I should take in hand first of all the girls that had a reputation for unselfish- ness. From the school I have extended my studies into life on this subject. " For instance," said she, with that sly glance which she was wont to give me when, in the midst of letting her arrows fly wildly, she had one little arrow wherewith she desired to pierce me ; " for instance, I have known men of your profession to be very unselfish in the planning and carrying out of their lives, when, in order to do the great work of the ministry, they have suppressed themselves and acted very unselfishly. They did right ; for otherwise they could not have conducted the church-work which their divine Mas- ter had laid to their hand. But I have known other clergymen whose praise for unselfishness was in all mouths — especially in the mouths of their selfish parishioners, who were perfectly willing to see them get a church, and maintain a church, and live on much less than their brethren of perhaps less endowments, and do all the work of the pulpit, Sunday-school, visitations, and missions, while the members of their congregations were allowed to indulge in a freedom from the discharge of duty which was actually destructive to their spiritual growth. Now this is a case of ' evil unselfishness,' It is a case ministers should not imitate and laymen would not. So, you see, I think that the object of selfishness must be taken into consideration in the estimate. " Do you know old Mr. Richards ? " said Ruth. 392 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Yes, I knew old Mr. Richards. " I have been watching him," said Ruth, " a number of years in his relations to his boys. Those young men have been growing up and have been taken into business with their father. I understand that the income of the business is about enough to support the family in com- fortable gentility ; but I finally discovered that those young men had three suits of clothes where their father had one. I came to learn from a friend who knows their business that the old gentleman de- nies himself to indulge his boys; that he does not take the rest and recreation necessary for his own continuance in health in order that he may set apart what ' Lord John ' Richards needs for a trip to the Continent in the summer, what his brother William needs for a run to Bermuda or Mexico in the winter, and what will be neces- sary to keep Tom Richards in the position of a ' clubable man/ Three clever fellows, those young Richardses, and I admit I have heard that no young men in town are so loud in their praises of their unselfish father as these young gentlemen. And on the poor income of their praise Mr. Richards is leading his narrow, unselfish life, and is making those young men intensely selfish. There is another family I know with whom you are acquainted — the family of the Widow Roberts. You know that her income is quite moder- ate, and there are no boys in the family to be bread-winners. She has two girls who were raised in the New York Hotel while their father, who was a banker, was alive. Now, in a very quiet place, very far up town, this little family are together, and their poor mother does not procure for herself clothes fit to go to church, and cuts herself from every comfort and pleasure that Jane and Emily may live somewhat near the plane on which they lived while their father was with them. I have watched these girls very closely. Their 'dear, dear mother' is always on their lips, though I don't think she can be much in their hearts. They praise her unselfish- ness, and it seems to me that it is only because it feeds their miser- able selfishness. If the mother denied herself and refused them — • if she brought all three of the family to the same level of living and gave the proceeds to some work of benevolence — those two amiable, soft-spoken, sweetish girls would shriek with rage. You see there is another case in which unselfishnes is injurious to all parties." FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 393 I was compelled to admit that there was much force in this view which Ruth presented with a great deal of earnestness. When I reviewed my own life I saw that the unselfishness of others had per- haps increased my own selfishness ; that even Ruth, this severe lect- urer on morals, had done me no little harm in this direction. I began also to think of instances where my own unselfishness had actually hurt others. We were both sitting silent while these thoughts were going through my mind, and I know not what was passing in Ruth's. Then I said : "What ought to be done in cases like these? " " O, I ought to ask you," said Ruth ; " you are a preacher." " Yes, but a preacher must make his sermons out of his hearers in order to make them suit his hearers. A physician is allowed at least to feel the pulse and look at the tongue of the patient. Are you trying to make your life right in this direction ? " " Yes," said she, " I really believe I have begun to do that." " What is your process ? " I asked. " Well, I have gone to the teaching of Jesus, and I am beginning to study that. My study has been closer since I have heard this modern chatter about 'Altruism,' the loving of others. I have con- cluded from the teaching of the Master that there is no true altru- ism which is not founded upon true and virtuous egotism, and there is no virtuous self-love which is not preceded in the heart by a su- preme love of the Lord. Before Jesus says, ' love thy neighbor,' he says, Move thyself,' and before saying, '* love thyself,' he says, Move the Lord thy God with all thy heart.' " " Now, he knows the human constitution. He does not start with either selfishness or unselfishness, but starts with the love of the Lord, and until that is brought into the heart there is no recti- fication of the human character. If old Mr. Richards and old Mrs. Roberts loved themselves wisely they would be better able to love their children ; but neither Mr. Richards nor Mrs. Roberts nor you nor I, my friend, can ever love ourselves or others rightly until first of all we love the Lord." " My dear Ruth," said I, " what do you say to Leigh Hunt's poem of 'Abou Ben Adhem ? ' " " O, yes," said she, with a smile that seemed to be brighter on 394 CHIPS AND CHUNKS account of her preceding seriousness, " I recollect very well the style with which you got those lines off in one of your sermons. It seemed to me as if at the close you smacked the lips of your soul over it as over a sweet morsel. I could not help seeing how pleased you were, too, when one of the students told that the late Dr. Frank Hamilton, in one of his lectures at the Medical College, applauded that portion of your sermon which contained Hunt's verses. I like the conceit of it, and the admirable music of the versification. But I am afraid we cannot trust to its implied teaching. The implication is that a man may love his fellow-men and not love the Lord. If it does mean this I think the teaching is injurious." Whereupon I ventured this explanation of the poem : When the angel said that Abou Ben Adhem's name was not on the list of those who loved the Lord it was a sort of celestial fib. The angel was simply trying Abou Ben Adhem. The fact was known to the world that Abou Ben Adhem did love his fellow-men — that he was a devoted philanthropist, in point of fact. He was plainly surprised that his name should not be on the roll. When the angel came back to his room the next morning and showed Abou Ben Adhem's name " leading all the rest" I told Ruth I thought that that really fell in with her theory, and went to confirm it : that if a man loved his fellow-men it was proof that he did love his Lord. " Well," said Ruth, " that may be so ; but I contend that you preachers shall let the people know that all self-suppression is not necessarily good ; that some self-suppression may be very evil ; that all self-love is not selfish, and that it is possible for a human being to love himself because of his relations with God; that is to say, that he may love himself not for himself, but for the Lord who loved him and gave himself for him." As I arose, and she helped me put on my overcoat, she said, " Well, now we must admit there is a good deal in which end of the road a man starts from, and there is a great deal of thinking and falling backward, as well as a great deal of thinking and falling forward." As all our readers may not recall the poem alluded to we repro- duce it for comparison : FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. . 395 " Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold ; Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold ; And to the presence in the room he said, ' What writest thou ? ' The vision raised its head, And, with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered, ' The names of those who love the Lord.' ' And is mine one ? ' said Abou. ' Nay, not so,' Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerly still, and said, ' I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.' The angel wrote and vanished. The next night He came again, with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." RUTH'S VIEWS OF " REPRESSION." A gentleman once, in Ruth's presence, quoted from an American statesman who has had a century of reputation for wisdom, as saying, " The world is governed too much." It could not have been new to her, but there may have been something in the tone in which it was said which set her wise head to thinking. It was some time before she rejoined the conversation, and then she made no allusion to the quotation. A few days after Ruth looked up at me and said : " I have been thinking about the world being governed too much. It seems to me that it affords a fine illustration of how a short sentence may contain a very weighty truth or a very heavy falsehood, according to the interpretation given it. I should say that in this statement every-thing hinged on the phrase ' too much.' It is plain that two different minds may attach two different significations to it. One man might feel that the saying pointed to the quantity and another to the quality of the government ; the one would have less govern- ment, the other would have different government. A thinker might deny the first and accept the second. I think that would be my position. The world could afford to have even more government, 396 . CHIPS AND CHUNKS perhaps, if that government were better. The same is true of a nation or a city, a church or a family. " I think we might begin at the beginning and look at this state- ment as it applies to the training of a child. It is not often that any child has too much government; but it is frequently the case that a child who has a great deal of government has it administered in a very bad and injurious manner. There are parents who raise children with the old tyrannical idea which was in the minds of mediaeval kings and is still in the minds of modern despots ; namely, that all government consists in repression. They have no idea of dis- cipline that does not repress, if not punish. One half of the amount of nervous energy spent by some mothers in repressing their boys, if directed to the wise training of those boys, would insure better characters to the children and a more comfortable life to the parents. " A parent may form a certain ideal of a boy, just as one would draw an outline on the canvas. Now, if her boy happens to be an exuberant youngster, and here and there grows out beyond the line of her sketch upon the canvas, she will be perpetually striving to crowd in the exuberance of his life to her ideal outline. It is easy to see that a process like this will be exceedingly irritating to the youngster, and he will resent it; and just as a community held in certain bounds by the iron arbitrariness of a monarch will become so irritated in the course of a few generations as to break out into a revolution, so the exuberant boy stands always, apparently, ready to begin a domestic revolution. It is not his fault that the trouble comes, it is the mistake on the part of the mother; and her mistake is, not that she governs her boy too much, but that she does not govern him wisely. " Calculation must be made for a certain amount of energy, and if the person who governs sees that that energy is going in the wrong direction no good comes of pushing it back; the wise thing to do is to find a new vent for it. A great body of water may be drawn off regularly and wisely, so as to run a number of mills for a number of years, or it may be repressed in such a way as that by its very weight, striving to find vent, it breaks its dams and drowns a village. Wherever any natural force makes a demand to be re- pressed it seems to me that it should also be drawn off. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 397 "The mother's business is to find something in the case of her boy which will employ his activities so as to give him relief during the moments in which he is engaged at it and some satisfaction when it is completed. But, you see, this requires some imagination in the mother and some care upon her part, also much self-denial and patience ; and it is so much easier, for the present, to repress than direct that she does the easier thing, laying up in store for herself the harder thing in the years that are to come. " This everlasting don't, don't, don't, wears down the child. I was in a house the other day when this occurred : The woman's boy came in and stood up, gazing at me. Her idea was that it was not the polite thing for the boy to stand in my presence. She 'don'ted' him in this way : ' Sit down,' said she ; this being her equivalent for ' Don't stand up.' In a lumpish sort of a way he flung himself down, a heap of a boy, in the chair. She ' don'ted ' him again ; she wanted to say to him, ' Don't sit in that way in the presence of this lady ; ' but, not being accustomed to circumlocution, for the reason that there was not space enough during the waking hours of any day for the innumerable orders which she issued un- less put in the tersest way, she called him again. ' Sit up,' she said this time. Now, in two seconds there were two acts of repression, and as the orders were uttered they sounded very contradictory and aggravating : ' sit down,' ' sit up ;' and I could see that, while the boy was downing and upping, his nature, inside of him, was growing more and more restless, and that by and by there would be a revolt. " I knew another mother," continued Ruth ; " a woman of con- siderable mind and good education, used to polite society, very nervous, and with a very nervous child. Her little boy w r as her great object of attention. She had read many novels ; she had an ideal gentleman in her mind, and every-where and always her boy was to be that gentleman in miniature. Now this was not a bad idea ; but her method of attaining it seemed to me calculated to lay up sorrow for her in the future. She soon began to consider her boy disobedient, to treat him as disobedient, and, what was still more harmful, to speak of him in the presence of others as disobe- dient. She did not see what others saw — that her very effort to bring him to her ideal, being conducted on a basis of repression, 398 CHIPS AND CHUNKS was making the boy disobedient. For instance, whenever she told him to lay down a spoon, a fork, a napkin, a book, or any thing else, she invariably, before the child had time to obey, put out her hand to put the book, the spoon, or what not, where she wanted it to be placed. The natural reasoning of the boy was that he was never to do any of the things commanded unless a hand was laid upon him. The result naturally would be, although she did not see it, that he would perpetually resist ; that this resistance, although it was not a battle and could hardly be called a skirmish, because it would occur sometimes half a hundred times a day, nevertheless was a conflict of will, and, however slight, a conflict involves oppo- sition. And my lovely friend did not see that she was training her boy to do nothing that he was not absolutely made to do by phys- ical force." RUTH'S DEFENSE OF WORRY. Concerning Different Methods of Disquietude. To Ruth's dainty boudoir I have access only at certain hours of the day. On one occasion I found her sitting at her desk pondering a letter which she held in her hand. She was evidently studying a reply to the epistle when I entered. To my question, " What is on your mind now?" she replied very nearly as follows: " I seem to be set to emphasize some of your teachings which are too feebly expressed and to modify others which are put very strongly. Here is a letter from one of your parishioners, who is worrying her- self over that statement of yours that ' It is not work which kills, but worry,' when you were striving to set forth worrying as a sin. Good Mrs. Stapleton writes me as one who feels that she has com- mitted a mortal sin and is in danger of everlasting damnation. She is now worrying because she worries ; and if that were pointed out to her as a fault she would worry because she had worried over wor- rying. Now, to tell you the plain truth, perhaps I am all wrong ; but I am getting tired of this sort of thing, and I have been thinking of preparing a Defense of Worry." " Well, dear Ruth," said I, " most surely, if you do, it will not be in self-defense, for I have never seen you worry in all my life. I FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 399. confess to a little curiosity to know the line of your defense. Sup- pose, now, you just talk aloud the kind of letter you would write to Mrs. Stapleton, and I will strive to remember it. In that way, perhaps, good will be done me, and you will hear how the thing- sounds before you commit it to writing." " Well," said Ruth, " here it is : " " My Dear Mrs. Stapleton : The old adage is, Give a dog a bad name and every body hits him. Some high and mighty moralist, himself with a thin skin and a long memory, was disturbed one day by somebody's worrying — it may have been a man, it may have been a woman — but he launched an ethical arrow against worrying which has been shot into and pulled out of more '.ore hearts than you and I can count. Now, I believe in worrying ! I never knew a man or woman of any account who did not worry." Here I interrupted Ruth and said : " That's not true, Ruth, or else you do not know yourself; for you are a treasure of a woman and you never worry." " I shall give up this thing," said Ruth, quietly and pleasantly, " if I am to have impertinent interruptions. I am not going for logic now : I simply want to right something that seems to me to be wrong ; so I resume. I should go on to say to Mrs. Stapleton that worry may be undue exhibition of excitement over one's environ- ment, and that it is not to be held up as the highest virtue known among men or angels ; but, nevertheless, there are some things so much worse that worrying, in the comparison, may seem to be tol- erably good. There are circumstances in which not to worry argues such apathetic indifference, such ethical obtuseness, such unconquer- able stupidity, that the person who does not worry may well be con- sidered an individual of no account. I should then set forth to Mrs. Stapleton, who is a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper, that, if I had to choose between her and Mrs. Jellyby, I should select her in pref- erence ; and I believe that our Lord would indorse the choice. Mrs. Jellyby did not worry ; she went on, calmly and serenely, making her flannel shirts for the naked savages in tropic heats without the slightest worry over the dreadful condition of the household : over Peepy's tumbling down stairs, and being generally in such a condition that one could not distinguish his bruises from his dirt ; over the needs 40O CHIPS AND CHUNKS of her husband, whom she was driving to bankruptcy ; over the de- mands of her house, in which Peepy was building houses from oyster- shells in the hall. All these she rolled upon her poor little daughter, and Caddy had the worry; and Caddy was worth a half-dozen of her mother. Don't hold up to me as a Christian example any woman who does not worry when things she is responsible for are going wrong. I see plainly that 'tis better to be systematic and orderly and provident, so that things may not go helter-skelter ; but when they are going helter-skelter where are the brains and where is the heart of the housewife who does not worry ? " So I should point out to Mrs. Stapleton that wherever any one is an overseer, wherever any one has accountability to others, where any one has dependent upon him any thing for which he must give an account, where, for instance, a capitalist puts his money into a bus- iness and leaves it in the hands of a young man, and every thing of success in the business is expected of that young man, and those who are under him throw things into sixes and sevens, it is but a natural expression of that young man's anxiety that he should worry. " I should further set before your parishioner that in the case even of a pastor, a holy man, a man ministering in holy things, I should have great compassion for him if he worried ; " and here Ruth gave me a significant glance. " The fact is," she continued, " I should not care much to be the parishioner of a pastor who was so ineffably amiable, so sugarly sweet, so transcendently self-controlling, that when every thing was going awry in Sunday-school, choir, financial department, and spiritual administration, by reason of the wrong- doing- of church officers and church members, he did not now and then give some expression to the concern which he felt. "The fact seems to be, I should point out," continued Ruth, who was never steadier in tones than when she was all aglow, " that there are different modes of being disquieted. Some are internal, some are external. Ordinarily it would seem that people apply worry to that which comes out on the surface and affects other people. For instance, you have reminded me to-day that I do not worry. Per- haps it is true that I have a certain temperament which prevents me from expressing the state of my heart so as to annoy you and others ; FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 40 1 but there are some people who cannot so control themselves as to keep this expression back. Then we say of them that they are 1 worrying ' — then we blame ' worry.' And I begin to think that in most cases our blame of 'worry ' in others is due to our own self-conscious- ness. We do not long to hear of the trouble of others. At any rate, I shall try to soothe dear Mrs. Stapleton the best I can ; but I shall not increase her anxiety by denouncing 'worrying.' M I am told that an eminent French surgeon always advises his patients, when undergoing an operation without the use of anaes- thetics, to cry and scream and bawl as much and as loud as they can, but by no means to try to repress their feelings. This sensible man knows that it is with trouble as it is with some diseases, such as measles, of which the very best treatment is to bring the thing to the surface, and the very worst thing to drive it in. Now, the gen- eral plan is to drive worry in, and I am going to try, in the case of this one patient, the good effect of striving to drive it to the surface and encourage her in that course. I shall administer warm tea." I have not seen Mrs. Stapleton since Ruth's letter, and so I can- not state the condition of my parishioner. When I learn the effect of Dr. Ruth's medicine I will report. In the meantime I shall not worry over any thing Ruth says or does. RUTH ON A GOOD OLD AGE. " To youth age looks far off and to be moving slowly. Never- theless, youth soon finds itself moving quite rapidly toward old age. Then temperament has much to do with the views which the young take of old age. Those views are merely imaginative and speculative, but old age itself is a reality. What we shall be in our old age has no effect upon what we are now, but what we are being and doing now will have a very great effect upon our old age. " The phrase ' a good old age ' is very euphonious. It may be uttered rather patronizingly or it may be uttered very appreciatively. We know what old age is ; now, what is a ' good old age ? ' To an- swer that one has to settle one's meaning of good. There may be a very good thing which is not a very bright, a very prosperous, or a very much desired thing. A thing may be very good toward this 4 o2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS world and very bad toward the next world ; a thing may seem to be very good for the body which is not pleasant to the soul, and another thing good for the spirit which is not agreeable to the flesh;' The above are the observations of Ruth when she heard that I was called to attend the funeral of an old lady ninety-nine years of age — a lady with whom neither of us had the slightest acquaintance, and of whom we did not know whether she had been a sinner or a saint. "Ninety-nine years! Why, that is a good old age, is it not?" said Ruth. " That depends," said I, " upon what you consider to be a good old age." That started Ruth into what is written above. When she had finished her little " lamentation," as I teased her by calling her dis- sertation, I said, " Now, Ruth, just sit down there and paint me a picture of a good old age." " To paint a picture," said Ruth, looking up at a painting on the wall, and making with the index-finger of her right hand invisible sketches upon the third finger of her left hand as her wont is when she is thinking aloud, "to paint a picture one must have a model visible to the naked eye or visible to the eye of the soul. Now, I am very sorry to say that it is far easier for me to paint a picture of a bad old age than of the other kind, because I happen to know a number of people who have been * spared,' as they call it, to their own harm. Certainly no old age is good that has a bad youth and a bad life behind it and a dark passage out of this life before it. Nothing seems to me possible to make that a good old age. I know some persons who are just that and no more, although they have wealth and surroundings which the world ordinarily thinks ought to make a person happy. Now, there is old Mr. Keltus ; he is eighty- nine years old, and he wants to live eleven more years so as not to die below par! His house on the avenue is admirable, his equipage is superb, and yet I am sure that that man is in a bad old age. At eighty-nine he is as unweaned from the things of this life as any young man in the full flush of its pleasures, and yet such is the effect of years upon him that he cannot pursue his pleasures — he FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 403 cannot execute his plans. With all that fine equipage how seldom he can go in the park ! He has made a will, and he is so free that he tells of its provisions. He is going to establish a great and greatly-needed institution in this city, and is going to endow it munificently. He tells this to every body, and is apparently living on advance payment of praise for what may really not be accom- plished ; the will is sure to be contested. The old man is doing no goad now because he thinks he will lump his beneficence into what he is going to do when he is dead and gone. " There, too, is old Mrs. Butterton. How wonderfully her figure is preserved ! When she is put in trim and set up in a room or walks across her parlor it is a beautiful, trig little figure, and she is plainly proud of it. There is her magnificent mansion, in which she can occupy only a corner, and there is her great picture-gallery, any one of whose paintings would endow a hospital. She has built a great church away from her own home ; but she has no comfort of public worship, and ministers of the Gospel abstain from calling upon her because many of your brethren are weak, and are afraid to pay proper attention to the rich lest they be called toadies. She is no more free than the poor mouse whom the cat has so subdued that it can only move two or three inches in front of the cat's paw and has not strength enough to run away, nor even to run into the hole, but feels that the moment it ventures beyond a certain spot the cat's paw will be down upon it. Now, that is the life she is living. A sharp, long-headed, calculating man has her perfectly in his control, and when she drew up a statement called her 'will and testament' it was his will and testament. I cannot call that a good old age; can you ? " I assented. I thought I could not. " There is our friend the bishop," said Ruth. " He has spent his life in the service of God. The moneys that have been given him he has expended upon charities, never doing it ostentatiously, but every now and then being discovered. In his old age his wife, sweet woman, is almost bed-ridden, his son is a drunkard, and that family is broken up. I can hardly call that a good old age." Then I interposed and said to Ruth that I could not stand this gloomy painting any longer ; give me something brighter. 26 4 04 CHIPS AND CHUNKS "Well," said she, "there is old Mr. Jenkins, on that farm of his. He is eighty years old ; his wife is nearly as old. They have been married over half a century. They have just enough to meet their wants from day to day. Their children are settled near them, hon- est working-people. All are communicants in the congregation wor- shiping in that little church into which Mr. Jenkins can go in the foulest weather — his garden backing upon the grave-yard. He is healthy, contented, with blessed memories, for he has always been a man giving great help by his wisdom and comforting others in many ways. He is every body's father, if he is not every body's grandfather. It is a means of grace to hear him talk of his hope of glory, and whoever goes near his house feels that if the church be a sacred place the Holy Spirit has sanctified the vicinity and poured its consecration also on Jenkins's home. He is willing to live, he is ready to die. Christ is his life, death is his gain. And that dear, sweet, ripe woman that walks along with him, is she not in a good old age ? They have the burdens which the years have laid upon their shoulders, but they have the everlasting arms of God beneath them. " Now," said Ruth, " I call that a good old age. It presents the aspect of the human life merging into the life everlasting. There ! That is my ideal as far as I can realize it." " Yes," I said, " That is an old age and good. The days that are numbered when the heart is not applied unto wisdom are not good. I wish we could contrive some way of making our young people feel that old age is the garnering of that harvest of middle life which is the product of the seed-sowing of youth." And then the seance broke up. RUTH AND DR. PHIPPS. " Well," said Ruth, " I have to pay for being a quiet, modest, unobtrusive sister." " How is that?" I inquired. " Just this way. Old Dr. Phipps has been here and has delivered himself of his views of Paul and the woman question ; and this he has done by the space of an hour. Why / should have to hear such FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 405 a lecture I am at a loss to know ; and I relieved myself by occupy- ing a portion of the time in seeking a solution of that question. Was it because the good old man suspected me of having an inclina- tion toward public speaking? But he had no ground for such sus^ picion. I have never spoken in an assembly in my life, unless you consider taking part in general conversation in a large company as coming under that head. A few times I have conferred with ladies on church matters or charities, but there was no man present. No, the old doctor could not have taken that ground. Was it because he was so far from the suspicion as to feel that, perhaps, I was the one woman in the parish to whom it was entirely safe to pour out his grievances? I think it must have been that." She paused, and looked as if she were still working out that problem. " W r ell, you gave him as good as he sent ? " " No, I didn't. I sought to find out what had started him afresh on this theme. Then I drew him out and questioned myself why we should not agree with his interpretation of Paul." " And why with Paul ? " I asked. " You know that it is not fair to ask me such a question. My posi- tion on that subject you know, if any man knows. You know that I have always felt and said that there was no middle ground; that the Bible is to be accepted wholly or rejected wholly. If not rejected it must be regarded as having paramount authority. Having so accepted it all we have to do is to ascertain its meaning, and, in regard to any precept, to learn whether it be of local or of universal application ; if plainly of local application, then to ascertain whether it may not contain a principle which we must adopt and apply to our times and our circumstances. That's our canon ; don't you, think it is a pretty sensible one — for a woman ? " There was no reason why I should not acknowledge that I did. But I urged Ruth to give me a sketch of the run of her thoughts while Dr. Phipps was holding forth. " Well," said she — Ruth's " well " seemed to be a little arrange- ment which combined the drawing in a good breath with a sort of mental girding, steadying her for a run down the " talk " she was about to deliver — " well, the dear old gentleman began by asking 40 6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS me if I had a Bible. Of course I had. It was an odd question. If he had followed it by the other question, ■ Then why don't you read it more and better?' I might have thought it rude, but it would have gone to the quick of my conscience. He didn't, how- ever. He seemed to wish to be able to put his finger on the very place and to have the inspiration of seeing the very words. There they were, in the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians : ■ Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak. ... If they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home.' " Ruth paused a moment and then resumed. " I think it must have been Mrs. Tope's earnest talk at last night's prayer-meeting which set him going, and he went around and around, like a humming-top, and never got far from one spot." " But that suggests that sometimes he did move a little." " Well, I must say that sometimes he did." 11 Now, confess, dear Ruth ; was it not you who moved him by your sly little questions ? " Ruth smiled. I wish you could see her smile when she perceives that her guileless cunning has been detected. " Well, all I did was to inject a few interrogatories, if my small questionings will bear so grand a name." " Give me a few specimens, please." " For instance, I suggested that a letter, with all its parts, could be better understood if we knew the writer and the person addressed. Now, we all know Paul as much as we know any man whom we have not seen ; but who were these Corinthians? Dr. Phipps didn't seem to have devoted much study to the state of society in Corinth ih apostolic days. I owned that the question had been outside my womanly sphere, so that I had never examined a book on the subject ; but I had heard that there was great corruption of morals and manners in Corinth, and, if that was so, it was most apostolically proper that Paul should warn the young Christian Churches against ,any thing that would bring the new faith into disrepute. I sug- gested also that I had gathered, from reading Paul's letters to the Corinthians, that even the Christians in that city were a very exceed- ingly difficult crowd to bring to decency of behavior. Why, even FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 407 the solemnities of the Lord's Supper couldn't awe them. They fasted so as to come to the feast with ravenous appetites, and then they crowded and pushed one another at the table, after the fash- ion of American travelers when the train stops ' ten minutes for refreshments,' to see which could get the most bread and wine and get it quickest. And some closed the feast under the table, ' drunken. 1 I called Dr. Phipps's attention to what Paul said of the men, that I might draw him awhile from what was said of the women of Corinth. Then, with a disciple's ingenuous love of learning, I sug- gested whether the word your in the text were not the emphatic word. If so, it might mean that in so rude and undisciplined a Church as that at Corinth any one could see that when the men were in a scuffle at the Lord's table, it would only add to the con- fusion of the scene if the women began to give the Church pieces of their minds." " Perhaps the doctor had observed that Paul had given no such explicit direction to any other Church." " O, but he was ready for me, and turned over the pages of my own copy of the Bible to 1 Timothy, second chapter and eleventh verse: ' Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.' Then the dear old gentleman followed it up by reading me Ephesians iii, 24. He was in dead earnest ; and it seemed so strange to me that an old man who was sweet as a nut to the core of his heart, and had a chivalrous devotion to women of all ages and ranks, should be so set against their taking part in public religious service." " Perhaps he loves the word of the Lord more than he loves women even, and regards the New Testament as the word of the Lord," was my interruption. "Well, it didn't provoke me a mite," continued Ruth, "If he had shown a spirit of tyranny, as though he loved to oppress the weak, I confess I should have taken it, perhaps, in a different spirit. As it was, the teasing spirit came upon me, and I asked the Doctor whether the record in Corinthians did not show some things more creditable to the women of Corinth than Paul's account of the scenes at the eucharistic feasts did to the men. He wanted to know what 4 08 CHIPS AND CHUNKS they could be. O, I was not dogmatizing. I was only asking for information ! He was willing, quite willing to impart it. "Then," continued Ruth, " 1 ventured to suggest that some of those women must have spoken out in meeting, which seemed to intimate that at least they were not stupid, and also that they had had the humility to confess ignorance, just like the men who were in it, by entering into a discussion which had stimulated their minds. He would allow me to say a few words in behalf of mem- bers of my own sex, although they did live so far off and so long ago ! That was said to soothe the doctor." "Was he soothed?" I asked. " Only partially," replied Ruth. " Then I thought I would push him a little. So I said, ' Dear doctor, the passage also seems to me to imply two things about the men ; namely, that the husbands of the women were present at divine service, and that those husbands who used to get drunk at the Lord's Supper were capable of instructing their wives at home. But in these later days there are three phe- nomena for which Paul did not seem to provide. One is that, throughout the world, at public religious worship generally the women are in a large majority, as they are said to outnumber the men vastly, even in heaven and in Massachusetts; another, that a great many women have no husbands at all ; and a third, that the men who do attend service are so busy that they cannot pay atten- tion to such subjects, and if they did are not enough at home for the wives to sit at their dear and revered feet to be taught in sacred things.' This seemed to startle him, so I followed it up: 'What's to become of the widows? What's to become of the spinsters? And so many Christian wives cannot induce their husbands to go to church. I'd like to know what prospect of religious instruction Mrs. Zebedee had at home, when Mr. Zebedee doesn't seem ever to have been present at the Master's discourses. By the way, doctor, do you think that we should ever have heard of Mr. Zebedee if it hadn't been for his Christian wife ? And don't you think it might have been well for Mr. Zebedee to " ask his wife at home " and to " learn in silence?" Indeed, when I become anxious about his case my only relief is in the trust that the poor man did so. Poor Mr. Zebedee!'" FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 409 Ruth, do you know that you were nearly wicked ? And I can see that demure look of innocence on your face while you were prodding that good old man," said I. " Prodding ! " exclaimed Ruth. " Why, no ; I was gently lead- ing the dear old soul around to look at the question on the other side." " Well, how did you end matters?" ** We didn't end them at all. As a compromise I suggested that in this age of the world, and in this western part of the world, per- haps we could carry out Paul's spirit and reach the end Paul wished, if, outside of public worship, we had a place which all the church members would consider a Christian ' home,' and that on set occa- sions all the married people came together, when each wife should ask her own husband for a practical application of last Sunday's sermons,- and all the other husbands and wives be permitted to listen as each spoke in his turn ; and that Christian bachelors and spin- sters be allowed to be present so as to learn how to be edifying when they had changed their relations. The services might be varied by an occasional hymn and prayer and passage from the word. The doctor broke in with exclamation, ' Why, that would be tantamount to a prayer-meeting ! ' 'It is open to that objection,' I replied, ' but ' — Just then there came a messenger calling the doctor in great haste to see Mrs. Tope's child, who had the croup. And so the woman question was adjourned." 4IO CHIPS AND CHUNKS READINGS FOR SUNDAY AFTERNOON. DAVID. The discipline to which God subjects a human spirit has two objects; the first is its own culture, the second is its adaptation to the cultivation of others. These statements are illustrated by the history of David. In the small city of Bethlehem, nearly eleven hundred years before the coming of our Lord, there resided a plain man of mod- erate substance, whose business is reported to have been that of a weaver of the veils of the sanctuary. His name was Jesse ; his wife's name is not known. Their family consisted of seven sons and two young women, probably daughters of Jesse's wife by a former husband. Into this domestic group a babe was born, B. C. 1088. They called him David, which means darling. His very appearance was remarkable. He had fair skin, rosy cheeks, and probably red or blonde hair and blue eyes. His blood was not purely Jewish. The Moabitess Ruth was his ancestress. As a rule the greatest men do not have " blue blood." There is in them a mingling of nationalities. This child was to have almost all the experiences possible to man, and to exert an influence which was to reach and modify all subse- quent States, religions, literatures, and civilizations. To-day there are no people among whom his name is not known and no land where his influence is not felt. His brothers were older than himself, and between them and him little familiarity existed. His associates were the sons of Abigail and Zeruiah, his half-sisters. His first employment was the feeding of his father's flocks. This simple pastoral life gave him physical vigor and promoted his soul-growth ; but this was not always a quiet life. In defense of his sheep he had occasional con- flicts with wild beasts, and sometimes, perhaps, with neighboring Philistine marauders. In these encounters he showed such prowess that his fame reached the court of the reigning king. That king FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 4 U was Saul, the first of the monarchs of Israel, of whom David was to become the rival and successor. When David was twenty-one years of age, one day, as the cus- tom was, probably at the first new moon of the year, a sacrificial feast was held at Bethlehem, and David's father, Jesse, presided. The greatest man at that time known was Samuel, the prophet. The Bethlehem worshipers were startled in the midst of their sacrifice by the incoming of the great prophet, driving a heifer and carrying a horn of consecrated oil. The frightened elders made haste to learn that he had come on a peaceful errand. Under God's direction he was to anoint the future king of Israel. All the sons of Jesse, except the youngest, were made to pass before the prophet ; but the divine restraint prevented their consecration. David was sent for. He came in from the sheep-fold, full of celerity, strength, and grace, and on the young shepherd's head fell down the drops of God's consecrating oil. When God has work for a man to do that man need not hurry, but he must be ready. David's time soon came. King Saul was engaged in conflict with the Philistines in the frontier hills of Judah. The armies were separated by the water-course of Elah. The Israelites were poorly armed, because the Philistines had allowed no blacksmith among them. Only king Saul had a com- plete suit of armor. Daily from the Philistine camp stalked a champion of huge proportions, with all necessary defensive and offensive armor. Day by day he defied the army of Israel, but every man was afraid to meet this giant of Gath. One day David's father sent him to his brothers in the camp. Those elder brothers chided him, as if he had allowed his love of excitement to draw him from his work and push him into danger. Notwithstanding the rebuffs he had met in the camp the impetuous young shepherd was introduced to the king and undertook the combat. With five polished pebbles, picked from the bed of the stream, and his simple shepherd's sling, he killed Goliath, and brought victory to his own people. After this conflict he probably spent his time between his father's flocks and the school of the prophets, where his genius for poetry and music must have made him a favorite. This musical talent 412 CHIPS AND CHUNKS was soon called into requisition. From something which had occurred when David had visited the camp, or from his general reputation, he was known to the courtiers of King Saul as having unusual musical talents. The king's life had been bad, and he was suffering from terrible depression of spirits. At the suggestion of his attendants Saul sent for David, who, when the evil spirit was upon the king, took a harp and played so that Saul was refreshed and well, and the evil spirit departed from him. But the popular greetings which David received when he returned from the slaughter of Goliath sowed the seeds of jealousy in the mind of Saul. Although he had become the king's son-in-law, and the king's son Jonathan was his bosom friend, he suffered so much from the snares laid for him by the royal jealousy that he escaped from the court and fled to Samuel. It really did seem at this time to be a problem whether David should devote himself to public life or to the prophetical office. It might have been the latter but for the ferocity with which Saul pur- sued him. This drove him into the life of an independent outlaw. For the space of six years David had various fortunes, but his fol- lowers increased in numbers until he had an organized force of six hundred men, among whom were some who had come from the forces of Saul. With these he had been settled more than a year at Ziklag, on the border of Philistia, when the battle of Gilboa occurred, in which the three sons of Saul were slain and the king perished by his own hand. Then David ascended the throne. As King of Judah he reigned at Hebron more than seven years. For about five years the house of Saul maintained some show of rule at Mahanaim, so that David's position during that time was simply that of a tribal chief. But his power gradually increased. A quarrel between Ishbosheth, Saul's son, and his general, Abner, caused the latter to bring Israel over to David. This gave him the presence and help of the priesthood. Then began David's reign of thirty-three years over all Israel. This third of a century was one of the most important in all human history. It gave the Hebrew people a national monarchy, an estab- lished Church, a splendid ritual, and the noblest sacred literature the world has ever produced. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 413 David determined to move his capital to a more nearly central place than Hebron. His quick, sagacious eye saw that Jebus was the spot. Its existence for nearly three thousand years has justified his choice. By a sudden assault it was captured. There David built his palace and set his throne. Thither he brought the tabernacle of the Lord, so that on one hill might be the residence of the invisible, eternal King, and his visible representative — the monarch David. He was no longer an Arab Sheikh ; he was the founder of an empire. He brought the whole land under him. He perfected a powerful military organization ; he laid deep and strong the foundations of an established Church ; he ordered its ritual, developed its music, and so enriched its psalmody that, east and west, his hymns are sung in every tongue, and his ritual modifies all forms of public worship. He conceived the idea of a temple to God such as the sun had never shone upon. He suggested what- ever is ample, rich, sublime, and solemn in temple or basilica, in mosque or cathedral. He lived to the age of seventy. He became father to the most splendid and revered monarch who ever sat upon a throne, and died, leaving to that son a kingdom the foes of which had been conquered and the prosperity of which had been insured. The Bible history of this extraordinary man exhibits the honesty of the sacred narrative. He rides the heavens of history like a sun — a sun whose spots are not concealed. He had so many splendid qualities of intellect, so many generosities of heart, so many noblenesses of character, and so many charms of manner, that a human biographer would be pardoned for omitting statements of those acts which stained his career. With all his prudence and piety it is told that the man after God's own heart was impetuous and passionate. Those very qualities which, under restraint, made him magnificent, rendered him wretched when they were uncon- trolled. But he was so ready to forgive all who sinned against him, so penitent whenever he sinned, so ready to make confession and reparation, that he will live in the hearts of men so long as the union of strength with gentleness, vigor with grace, humility with chivalry, and intellect with religion, excite the admiration and win the affections of mankind. 414 CHIPS AND CHUNKS A man can give the world only what he has, and all that a man has he must get by experience. The world will always have in it struggle and success and failure ; the wolf of poverty and the sirens of wealth ; sin, sorrow, penitence, contrition, faith, hope, charity, and all earth gives, and heaven offers, and hell threatens to our human nature. The prayers and rejoicings of mankind must go to God in song. One singer must be raised who shall set the sorrows and the shouts of humanity to music. He cannot sing for the sorrowful who hath not himself suffered. He cannot sing for the shouting who hath not himself succeeded. In David God raised up a man in whose physique perfection came from mingled blood of Gentile and of Jew — a man in whom the marriage of practical sagacity with the poetical faculty pro- duced the noblest offspring of the intellect ; a man who received for the enriching of his nature all out-door influences shooting up from landscape and raining down from sky ; a man made tender by care for gentle domestic animals and courageous by encounters with wild beasts ; a man who was courted and hunted down — the darling of his friends and the terror of his enemies ; a man who excited among men and women every friendly and every sinister passion and experienced their action upon himself; a man against whom crimes were committed and who committed crimes against others ; a man who had been peasant, courtier, exile, warrior, prophet, statesman, poet, prince, king, emperor ; a man who knew what it was to have one son die in infancy and another in rebellion against him, and a third who should fill the world with the glory of his fame ; a man who should stand in the fullness of his power, having had experience of every private and every public station, every private and every public joy, every private and every public sorrow. It is as if the all-wise God had constructed in one human being an organ with all the keys and stops possible to humanity, and as if the Holy Ghost had on that organ with those keys and stops played every tune of every song that all humanity may need to sing in life or death, or carry in memory from earth to heaven. Such David was in the city of the great King on earth ; what must he be in the city of the new Jerusalem and in the temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens ! FOR EVERY El RESIDE. PAUL. 415 There have been men who might be called " hinge-men ;" that is to say, men on whom the valves of the doors of the ages have swung. Perhaps there have been only seven of these, but of them Paul of Tarsus was one of the strongest and most remarkable. Such men do not come by chance. The Divine Providence who is to use them arranges the circumstances which are to produce them. It is instructive to study the precedent connections of such a man as Paul. There were three great civilizations with which he was to come in contact, and which he was to influence energetically; namely, the Hebrew civilization of revealed religion, the Greek civilization of intellectual culture, and the Roman civilization of political power. He was born in the city of Tarsus, when Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was about eight years of age. Tarsus was no mean city. It had an old history, exerted great influence, was the seat of a Roman governor, and, at the time when Paul was born, if we may credit Strabo, it was even more illustrious than Athens and Alexandria in all that relates to philosophy and modern education. Paul's origi- nal name was Saul, a Hebrew word meaning " asked for." His parents, then, were Jews, but the family had become free Roman citizens probably on account of some service to the State the nature of which is not recorded. It will be seen how three elements of culture met in this remark- able person to fit him for his remarkable work. He must have very early become acquainted with Greek literature, and with his powerful intellect have absorbed very much of Greek culture ; he must have been trained to the discharge of the duties of Roman citizenship, of which through every period of his life he availed himself; and, as he was destined to a high place in the Jewish Church, he was early taught in the sacred writings of his ancestors, In addition to these he early acquired a trade, to which handicraft he was indebted in later years for much of his support. The Jews held the excellent maxim that " he who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to steal." To fit him to become a doctor of law he was subsequently placed under the tuition of Gamaliel, one of 4 i 6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the seven teachers to whom the title of Rabbon was given. Such was his social and intellectual preparation for life. So great was his intellect that the probability is that he became a member of the Sanhedrin in very early life. He was at Jerusalem when Stephen was stoned, and took part in inflicting that martyr- dom. That scene was to him as the sight of blood to a wild beast. His furious zeal for the Pharisaic interest led him to volunteer to persecute the Christians every-where. On such an errand he was when his conversion took place at Damascus. A remarkable fact in Paul's history is his retirement to Arabia for the three years which next followed his conversion. Learned as he was in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew literature, he seems to have secluded himself after his baptism to study the new religion and his relation to it. Let young converts who are rash to rush at work, and who feel as if the world would be lost if they did not commence preaching at once, ponder Paul's Arabian seclusion. At the close of it he reported himself to the disciples at Jerusalem, and then went to his home to await the providence of God. In the meantime between his own city and Jerusalem, namely, in Antioch, there had come to be a great center of Christian in- fluence. At the solicitation of Barnabas Paul wrought there a year. The first thing which brought him into close official connec- tion with the church at Jerusalem was his bringing aid to the Christians there from the church at Antioch. That done, he estab- lished his head-quarters at Antioch. From it he prosecuted three missionary tours. In the first he was accompanied by Barnabas and John Mark. It embraced the isle of Cyprus and the three provinces of Pam- phylia, Pisidia, and Laconia, in Asia Minor. In every place, so far as practicable, he established churches after the model of that of Jerusalem. About A. D. 50 the first Christian council was held. Its occasion was the attempt of Jewizing teachers to fasten the Mosaic ritual, especially circumcision, on the Gentile converts. Paul's liberality and breadth of mind had lifted him above such narrowness. He saw plainly that Christianity was going to be something higher and larger than a mere Jewish sect. It may be remarked, in passing, that, from his day to this, Christian councils FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 4 1 7 have been engaged on questions created by the attempts of narrow- sectarians to bind the free spirit of Christianity. In the first council the powerful intellect of Paul gained the day for liberal measures. After that occurred his second missionary tour, which was accom- plished in company with Silas, and embraced Cilicia and the regions he had already traversed and the churches he had already founded. At Paul's solicitation Timotheus joined the party, and the mission- aries proceeded through central Asia Minor to the western coast. Thence, moved, as he believed, by the Holy Spirit, Paul went with his companions over to Europe, and commenced his work at Phi- lippi, where, through the influence of a woman, Christianity was in- troduced into that continent which has since become the strong- hold of the religion of Jesus. For many days all was quiet in this first little European church ; but a sudden storm broke. There was a party who trafficked in divination, and one of the female slaves following the apostles cried after them in words of compliment. This she did for several days. Paul saw that if this thing continued the glorious Gospel of the Son of God would soon get to be asso- ciated in the popular mind with the low work of these mediums. Whatever psychic force the woman had, Paul broke it in the name of Jesus. This took away the gains of her masters, and those mountebanks so influenced the Roman authority that Paul and Silas were cast into prison, after having been publicly scourged. In the night as they sang there was an earthquake, and when the jailer saw how serene and peaceful were these tortured prisoners a new light broke upon him, and he became a convert to the new faith. The next day the authorities of the city became aware that Paul was a Roman citizen, and honorably discharged him from prison. His manliness was conspicuous on this occasion. He had been un- justly thrust into prison ; he would not accept his liberty and walk out, but demanded that his unjust judges should come and bring him out with honors. True meekness is always manly. Thence Paul and his companions went to Thessalonica, where many converts were made, but where also a persecution was raised against him. The fanaticism of his Jewish opponents made Paul's position so perilous that he went to Berea ; but the Jews of Thes- 4 l8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS salonica followed him there and drove him from that place ; but not until he had set the people to reading the word of God, to see whether the things which he taught were true. At the urgency of his friends Paul retreated to Athens. The story of his public disputations there, and the report of his extraor- dinary speech on the Godhood delivered upon Mars' Hill, and probably almost under the shadow of that remarkable work of Phidius, the Colossus of Minerva, are set forth in the Acts of the Apostles. We do not know how long he remained in this city, but converts were made, and among them a member of the court of the Areopagus. From Athens, the seat of learning, he went to Corinth, the seat of luxury, and supported himself there by the labor of bis hands in tent-making. He preached the Gospel for nearly two years, and established a flourishing church, to which he directed several letters, two of which are in the sacred canon. Thence going to Antioch he remained a short season resting himself, and in the autumn of the year left this city for the last time, to make his third and last missionary journey. His first station was Ephesus, in which city he remained three years, exerting a powerful moral influence and making many converts. It was at Ephesus that he induced the magicians to burn their books at a great pecuniary sacrifice. But even pride of opinion is not so strong as covetousness. The silversmiths of Ephesus had been accustomed to manufacturing portable shrines of Diana, whose great temple was in their city. When May, the month of Diana, came round, a great crowd were assembled in Ephesus. These arti- sans perceived that the doctrines of Paul were diminishing their sales, and that induced them to stir up the passions of the populace. There was confusion and a mob. Paul went to Macedonia in great dejection because of some chronic malady with which he had long suffered, and which he described as a " thorn in the flesh." He was always burdened with " the care of all the churches;" but here he was cheered by the arrival of Titus, who brought good news from the Corinthian church. Before carrying out his intention to go to Rome Paul determined FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 419 to visit Palestine. It was on this voyage that he stopped at Miletus, and had his affecting interview and parting with the elders of the Church of Ephesus. Every-where on the route his friends seem to have endeavored to dissuade him from going to Jerusalem; yet " bound in spirit " he went forward. It was probably at the feast of Pentecost, A. D. 58, that Paul and his party arrived in Jerusalem. Seeing the elders of the church he laid before them some account of his wide and varied journeys and of his abundant labors in declaring the new gospel and plant- ing the new church. Those who acknowledged Christ in Jerusalem could hardly yet be called Christians. Because of their local posi- tion in the holy city the party in Jerusalem seem to have been re- garded throughout the whole Roman Empire as the very center of the church. In point of fact, as yet they were a mere Jewish sect ; and we cannot read the account of Paul's interview with them with- out a feeling of chagrin that so great a man should for a season have allowed himself to be led by such little men. But Paul had not been on the spot. He was governed by the representations which the local society made. They were afraid of losing members, and were willing to yield the liberty of the Gospel to the bondage of Mosaicism rather than diminish the number of their party. " Do this, therefore, that we say to thee," was their proposition to Paul. In an unfortunate moment he did it, and this was " it":. They had a party of four who were discharging a Nazaritic vow. Paul joined them, at the suggestion of the elders, and was seen with them in the temple purifying himself after the fashion of the Jews. The tact of Paul appears in all his history as extraordinary, and tact is the cousin of grace ; but tact never necessitated a hollow and mere politic expediency. Sometimes the truest Christian tact is to knock error square between the eyes, sometimes to let it fall of its own weight and weakness, and always to be unexacting in things which are unnecessary. But in this case the elders of Jerusalem wrought so upon the goodness of Paul as to place him in a position of peril from which they could not extricate him. He was seen in the temple and seized on the charge of desecrating the sacred precincts by bring- ing Gentiles therein. He was rescued by the Roman guard and sent 27 420 CHIPS AND CHUNKS to Caesarea, to Felix. Felix discovered that he was innocent ; but if the elders in Jerusalem were ecclesiastical time-servers Felix was a political demagogue. To play his advantages he detained Paul two years and then offered him a trial at Jerusalem, which he knew would issue in his destruction, and which he refused. Using his right as a Roman citizen he appealed to the Emperor, and to Rome he was sent. In Acts 27 we have an account of his perilous voyage. He is supposed to have arrived at the capital in the spring of 61. Here he remained two years under military guard, and while Nero was upon the throne Paul preached the Gospel privately with such success that converts were made even in that vile Caesar's house- hold. On his first trial he was acquitted ; then follows an interval of which we have no authoritative information, although there seem to be indications that he may have prosecuted a missionary tour even as far west as Spain. He returned to Rome, where he was again arrested, tried, condemned, and decapitated. The date is uncertain ; some authorities place it in A. D. 65, while others make it February 22, A. D. 68. It is impossible to overestimate Paul's influence upon the world. At this day it is immense. He took the simple facts of the life, death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and formed them into a gos- pel which has changed the whole face of the world. In a crevice in the huge rock of the Roman Empire he planted the seed of truth, and it split and shattered the rock. He cared little for the form of organic societies. He was not stringent for constitution and by- laws. He perpetually inculcated the ethical force of order in all things, especially in Christian work. He was large and liberal. He planted himself only on that which must be absolutely pre- served, and for its perservation he gave up every thing else. He became all things to all men that he might save some. He taught the doctrine of the ennobling effects of suffering, and he demon- strated it in his life. He was a man of the strongest convictions, of the keenest appreciations, and the largest charities. He was seized and mastered by the conviction that Jesus Christ by the grace of God had tasted death for every man ; and that fact, in his eyes, put all men on an equality in the sight of God's grace. It was this which FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 421 enabled him to preach the gospel of the universal redemption and of the church catholic. Always an invalid, always misunderstood by some, always persecuted, always burdened with the churches, and at last, like his Master, forsaken of all men, this man had but one purpose and one pursuit from the day the convincing glory of Jesus burst on his eyes outside the gates of Damascus until the day when, outside the Ostian gate of Rome, his spirit shot up from his beheaded body to wear the eternal crown of righteousness. In another particular the close of his life was like that of his Master. His sun went down in darkness and in blood. The hearts of real Christians were failing them. Fanatical sectaries were per- secuting the true disciples. The imperial persecutions had swept over the Christian societies destructively. He did not know that the letters which he had written, and which those little societies had, in times of persecution, hidden away in their archives, were to be gathered by the hand of Providence and formed into a sacred canon. He did not know that he was to stimulate and inform the greatest intellects that should succeed him. He did not know that on that very road on which he walked betv/een the Roman guards to the place of his decapitation there should be built a superb edifice to bear his own name, to be dedicated to the religion of Jesus, and to be enriched by the gifts of the kings of the earth. He did not see Saint Paul's-outside-the-gate and Saint Peter's in the Leonine City, and the Pantheon consecrated to the new faith. He did not know that a Christian should be a Roman Emperor, and Rome itself the capital of a church which should represent that spiritual kingdom which was to spread further than Roman war- rior had ever conquered or Roman poet had ever dreamed. He did not know that, after eighteen centuries had rolled over his grave in the catacombs, it should come to pass that there should never be a single instant, day or night, in which some man should not be studying, or expounding, or in some manner propagating the princi- ples which he had taught. He did not know that the verdict of the generations should place him side by side with Moses, and regard them both as lifted together above any altitude of human great- ness occupied by any mere man. But he was great enough to live a life of the grandest heroism 422 CHIPS AND CHUNKS because of the conviction which he thus expressed : " I know whom I have believed, and that which I have committed to him he will keep to that day," and to die like a conqueror, shouting " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- ness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day." That diadem he now wears among the supernal immortals, while he stands among the immortals of human history wearing the tiara of prophet, apostle, and martyr. GREATER WORKS. Our great Master said (John xiv, 12), " He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father." In advance, we should expect a religion of divine origin to be adapted to the development of the highest capability of our nature. Now, we know that the power to believe in truth and to act upon it, confident of its validity, whatever may be the appearances to the contrary, is the highest capability of our intellectual and moral constitution. True great- ness resides in the development of our highest capability ; and if that be to climb up on another it is no degradation so to climb. The best the morning-glory can do is to grow up on trellises ; it is no shame for this plant thus to grow. The oak can grow with- out trellis, but the oak must have soil ; it is no shame that it grows rooted in the soil. Men look at the outside, God at the inside. Actions arouse the enthusiastic applause of men, but it is the spirit which performs the action that is admired by God. It is faith in the divine administration of the universe which lies back of all great discoveries and achievements ; faith being the prompter, sustainer, soul of action, and being as much superior to action as spirit is to body. This could be illustrated in ten thousand cases. Take that of Columbus. How we magnify his discovery of America! But that was almost nothing. America lay in his path. He could not help the discovery, if the planet were a globe and he sailed west- ward ! ' The real greatness was in himself; in his faith in certain truths ; faith that led him to besiege courts, endure privations, face FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 42 3 ridicule and scorn. There was the greatness. Columbus's faith was a thing greater than all visible continents. True religion always develops faith and lets that form the practice. A morality constructed on rules is powerless. A man that does right because he believes he ought to do right may be trusted ; but a man who does not steal because it is a fracture of a rule is perpetually liable to become a thief. The story of Paradise, as given in the Bible, shows that the state of our first parents was a condition for the development of their faith. What was the forbidding of one fruit, and only one, but a test of man's faith in his heavenly Father's wisdom and goodness ? Then came the deluge. Study that inter- val between the command to Noah to build the ark and the down- pouring of the flood. Was it not a hundred and twenty years of the discipline of faith ? Take the history of Exodus, that prolonged journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. Can you understand this without regarding it as a trial of faith, a development of faith, in the Israelites ? Was not the whole space of time from the settle- ment of Israel in Palestine to the death of our Lord a discipline of faith? And has not the same thing been going on ever since? Enough is revealed to us now to be the basis of faith, but no such revelation need ever be expected as shall supplant faith by knowl- edge ; such a thing would be a disaster. Jesus Christ came to pre- sent a permanent object of faith and a perpetual source of spiritual power. He was " God manifest in the flesh," and he says, " Ye believe in God, believe also in me." That his teachings should have a controlling influence over men it was necessary that they should believe in his divinity. Both by works and words he partially created this conviction; and, what is so almost constantly overlooked, there is no greater proof of the divinity of our Lord than is shown by the very transfer of the same kind of moral power to all who really lead lives of faith in him. " The works that I do shall ye do." What works did Jesus do to which he had reference? Certainly he did not include the work of atoning sacrifice, which could be made by none who was not at once God and man. Of what was the Master talking? Of his oneness with the Eternal Father; of his divinity, his essential deity. Now, whatever in any age is needed to set this forth to the world sufficiently to convince unprejudiced, willing, and 424 CHIPS AND CHUNKS intelligent minds, shall from age to age be granted to those who believe in Jesus. No amount or quality of evidence can convince the unwilling. Jesus wrought miracles. So did his disciples. In the Acts of the Apostles we learn that the shadow of Peter healed diseases, that devils were cast out by aprons taken from St. Paul, and that Elymas was struck blind. But miracles are instructive to the human intellect only in its childhood. They are the products of any intellect that knows how to employ the laws not generally known. All who believe in Jesus shall at any time be able to perform miracles, when miracles are necessary. But they are never needed by a religion which has once grown large and strong enough to stand alone, and certainly the Christian religion does not need miracles. Miracles are on the plane of the material and perishable. Miracles are temporary and must be few. The building up of a high, strong, holy character out of one that is depraved and low is a greater work than raising Lazarus. The elimination and preparation of a truth is greater than is a miracle which only changes water to wine or multiplies loaves. Men who lead holy lives do, by so living, carry greater conviction to the hearts of the world than if they wrought miracles, in the vul- gar sense of that word. Under the preaching of probably each one of the apostles more people were converted than under the ministry of Christ, and more under the influence of humble Christians in our day than under any of the apostles. " Such honor have all his saints." Have you? TRUSTING IN RICHES. In the tenth chapter of Mark this record is made : " And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God ! And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answer- eth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God ! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 425 The words of Jesus, like the words of all other teachers, must be read in the light of common sense ; without that they are always liable to be perverted. The passage which we have just copied is one that has been the subject of such perversion. It is quoted, and requoted, as if leveled against the possession of large amounts of material wealth. Now, surely, Jesus did not teach that it was wrong to possess wealth, for the life which he taught his disciples to lead is such a life as will naturally make them capitalists. The cultivation of the intellect and of the heart, the employment of the brains and the hands, useful and intelligent activity — these things are necessary to the Christian life, and these things ordinarily result in the accumulation of material wealth in larger or smaller amounts. Nor is the absence of material wealth — capital, if you choose to call it so — a thing to be denounced, unless it be the product of idle- ness, wastefulness, and bad habits. A man may decline to lay up vast amounts of wealth because he has deliberately come to the con- viction that money would better be put aside for some good object than be appropriated to his own personal uses. In such a case the man's object is heroic. The difficulty in entering the kingdom is not in having great possessions or in lacking them. It is, as the great Teacher himself explains, in trusting in riches. " How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God." Having riches and trusting in riches are two very different things. There are a thousand poor men who trust in riches to one rich man who trusts in riches. Let no poor man think that he is free from this great disability just because he is poor. Does he not trust in riches ? Then what mean those dreams with which his sleep is filled —dreams of caverns piled with gold, dreams of such wealth as no Aladdin's lamp ever was able to discover? What means that thought perpetually running through his waking hours — " If I had only ten thousand dollars ; " or, " If I only had a hundred thousand dollars ; " or, " If I only had a million dollars?" As if the possession of any one of these amounts would make him independent, supply the desires of his soul, and secure the destiny of his future ! Is not a man who has thoughts like these a man who trusts in riches? Whatever it is on which we depend to make us independent of our fellow-men and of God, to supply pur present wants and secure 42 6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS our future, that is the thing in which we trust. It is important that the poor should look at this. With great complacency they hear ministers read this passage from the pulpit and feel as though it could not have reference to them. A poor man wasting his energies and struggling with all his might to accumulate a little fortune is a man who may more trust in riches than his neighbor worth a million sitting at a short distance from him, and sitting there in the sure conviction that millions upon millions cannot satisfy his soul and cannot secure his future. In such a case as this the poor man trusts in riches and the rich man distrusts them. The rich man's chance of salvation may be better than the poor man's. Nevertheless, while this is true it behooves the rich man to con- sider carefully, while riches increase, that he does not set his heart upon them. No man can enter the kingdom of heaven who does not expect that the kingdom is to supply his present and secure his future. He is not to trust in riches ; he is not to rely upon poverty. The deceitfulness of riches is a biblical proverb. Men are deceived while they are seeking wealth, and they are deceived by wealth when they secure it. It brings many things that are necessary and many that are agreeable ; but the things the soul most wants can neither come nor go with material wealth. CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. The difference between the inculcations of the Gospel upon this subject, and those of all other religions and all other philosophies, is this : that they endeavor to awaken philanthropy by presenting man to his fellow-man either in his own nature or in his relation to his fellow-man ; whereas Christianity teaches me to love my fellow-man, neither for what he is in himself, nor what he is to me, but for what he is to God. Outside of Christianity we are taught that we are to love a man because he is a man ; the simple fact of the segregation of his species from every other species being, according to this philos- ophy, a sufficient ground of affection. That is generally supposed to be the meaning of Terence's famous line: " Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto" FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 427 The utter futility of any such sentiment to produce any practical benefit to human character and to the human race is shown by the fact that the very crowds who applauded this splendid line could gloat upon the gladiatorial show and turn down the thumb for the destruction of a wretch who had fallen in the arena. The other ground of love for our fellow-men is in their relations to ourselves or in their characters. Thus the ties of consanguinity, the relations instituted by marriage, the friendships occasioned by affinities, the advances made to us by those who know how to please us, on the one hand ; and on the other, sweet, charming, admirable characteristics in our fellow-men. The objection to this ground is its exceeding narrowness. Any one man's known kins-people and relations must be very few as com- pared with the population of the whole globe. If he is to love only those who love him the exercise of his affections is on the small spaces of selfishness, and not in the large fields of philanthropy. The Gospel teaches us that God loves every man, regardless of our human distinctions of saint and sinner. In his sight all men are sinners, and by his infinite heart all these sinners are loved. A Christian's life must be a life animated by that belief and stirred by that sentiment. The man may not be sweet, nor charming, nor admirable ; the woman may be ugly and hateful ; but the Christian is always to remember that, however earthly and sensual and devil- ish any man or woman may become, that man, that woman, is dear to the heart of God. So, if this precept be obeyed, a Christian man will have his whole life shaped by the spirit of love for God and love for man. CAUSING TO OFFEND. No one can gainsay the authoritative utterances of the divine Master and his inspired apostles. Jesus said: "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea " (Mark ix, 42). Paul said : *' It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak" (Rom. xiv, 21). 4 28 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Under these precepts for behavior there must be some most im- portant doctrines, based on the character of God and the relation- ship of men. They are sufficiently severe to arouse the conscience even of Christians who are not oversensitive. Many conscientious Christians have used them for excessive self-torment. Nothing should be said or written to relax in any man a binding sense of the obligations of duty; but as there are always two sides to every ques- tion it may be well enough occasionally to look at the side least thought of. It is true that being drowned is a small catastrophe compared with that which shall befall any man who shall inten- tionally cause the least and feeblest believer in Jesus to fall away from his faith ; or, as our version expresses it, ''who shall offend one of these little ones." But would it not be well enough to re- mind these " little ones" who believe in Christ that they must not be too quick to take offense — that they must not fall away at every little thing in the behavior of their brethren which they cannot understand or approve ? It will not help the " little ones " when the brother who caused the offense is held down in the bottom of the sea by a millstone around his neck. The "little ones" must not suppose that they will be standing on the other bank, like Aaron and Miriam, shouting over the dead Pharaoh. The one was drowned because he behaved with such want of piety and fraternity as to cause the little one to break his neck. But will that mend the little one's neck? Moreover, it is probably true that very often the state of affairs painted in this passage seems to be taking place- when, in reality, it is not. Some one in a church seems to be such a " little one " as is described in the text. Well, he is " little " enough ; but being little is not all that is necessary to bring a man under the representation of the character here made by our Lord, The greatest and most royal soul in Christendom may be one of Christ's " little ones ;" because either he has very simple faith in the Lord or just the beginnings of true faith. He stands in contrast with the multitudes of those narrow, dwarfed souls who creep into the Church and call themselves " Christ's little ones." This class of people are all the while aching to take offense. They are never satisfied until some brother does a thing which they can make the occasion of offense to themselves. When such a thing does occur FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 429 it does not shake their faith in Christ ; it simply offends their over- weening self-conceit. It is intolerable that the manly repose of true-hearted Christian men who love God and love their fellow Christians should be disturbed, and that they should have their lives spoiled by standing in constant dread of offending " little ones ' who have only such claim to that name as vermin have. Christ's true " little ones " are the last to make offense and the class most difficult to offend. It is because these precious souls are such that the sin of causing them to offend is one whose enormity was so vivid in the sight of Christ. When we come to Paul's precept it reads as if it were better for a Christian man to die than to cause his brother to stumble, or do wrong, or become weak ; for if a man is neither to eat flesh, nor drink wine, nor any thing — that is, if he is to abstain from eating and drinking altogether, which Paul says he would better do than destroy a soul — is it not well for that member who stumbles, or is offended, or is made weak, to examine his own soul? Why should he stumble because his brother eats something or drinks something which he can neither eat nor drink ? W T hy does he take an offense because he thinks his brother has com- mitted an offense ? Why does he become weak because his brother is strong? A survey of Christian society would seem to show that scores of so-called Christians are using the sayings of the Master and of his apostles as the credentials of an inquisitor rather than as the de- fense of weak Christians. Suppose, for instance, you have a preju- dice against a certain dress or diet, and your brother has none ; that he can wear that dress and indulge in that diet and be spot- less before God and comfortable in his life. Further, suppose you employ your prejudice to annoy him, to interfere with the liberty wherewith' Christ hath made him free, to disturb his peace of mind, and perhaps cause him to offend ; how now, weak brother ? Is the Lord going to pardon your maliciousness on the score of your weak- ness ? Are the weak to rule the strong, the narrow to rule the broad, the little to rule the great ? If this other side were looked at oftener fewer offenses would come. If men would carefully ex- amine the question whether they have a right to be offended on any ground of relationship to Christ and his people, and whether 430 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the offenses they take are not simply on the ground of their personal vanity, we are sure that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases of every thousand in which these passages are quoted they would be dropped as inapplicable ; a better atmosphere would fill the house of God, and a more natural and manly Christianity would take the place of the strait and degraded ritualism which is dictated by narrowness and enforced by bigotry. LOOKING. What we see in any thing or any man is largely due to the eyes with which we look. It is a rule that we ordinarily bring from any thing according to that which we carry to it. A picture, one of Raphael's, must always be the same in itself, but is it not really as many pictures as there are beholders? An untu- tored child sees in it only a group of persons, perhaps only a woman and child. An anatomist sees something which never enters the eyes of the child. An artist sees a third picture, a poet a fourth, a saint a fifth. It depends upon the eyes and, still more, upon what is behind the eyes. An old blind beggar sits by the way-side. To the political econo- mist who passes by he seems a factor in the great system we call " society." An oculist does not see that picture at all, but he does behold a very interesting patient. The artist sees what he after- ward reproduces in a picturesque sketch, the poet what he after- ward weaves into the lines of a touching poem. A philanthropist beholds an object of charity, a destitute and afflicted fellow-being. As Jesus looks upon the man he sees a soul for whose salvation he has an unutterable longing. It is what is in the beholder rather than in the spectacle. In many places in the history of our Lord there is the statement that Jesus " looked." If only those on whom he looked could have known what was behind those eyes how they would have been thrilled ! In the third chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is a story one phrase in which led to what is written above. Peter and John were going up to the temple to worship. It was " the hour FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 431 of prayer." A lame man lay at the gate which was called " Beauti- ful." Many had seen him that day. Perhaps Peter and John had seen him often before. But somehow on this occasion Peter looked with different eyes — that is, with a different state of mind and heart. The phrase, " fastening his eyes upon him," is very impressive and instructive. Pentecostal power had quickened and strengthened all Peter's faculties. Love for the ascended Lord and apostolic re- sponsibility had so transformed Peter that even on his way to pray he was moved to work. He looked upon the man, and as he looked the man gained a kind of fascination for the apostle, who saw in him not simply an ungainly beggar who had never walked, but a human being in whom might be shown the power of the ascended Jesus. And so the lesson comes to us all to take heed how we look as well as how we hear. The best preparation for the eyes is in the heart. A selfish man sees in every thing only an instrument for his selfishness or an obstruction to his selfish enjoyment. A generous man sees in the same things outlets for the refreshing and fertilizing streams of his soul. A sinister spirit can find faults every-where and in every being, even in saints, in martyrs, in apostles, and in Jesus ; and there is no human being living so utterly worthless that a truly Christian man can find nothing in him to love. Let us not judge the world and men by what we see in them, but by that judge ourselves. If all things seem yellow we have jaun- dice. If we see all the faults and none of the beauties of our fellow-men we may be sure that something has gone wrong with us. If we see only what w r e may pervert and destroy we are like the devil ; if our eyes seek and find something in every soul which we may make the field of operations for that soul's uplifting and sanc- tification we are like Jesus. When we recollect that the eyes of the Lord are upon us we are sometimes covered with confusion at the remembrance of the fact that he is looking upon a poor deformed beggar ; but it is a sustaining comfort to recollect that behind those eyes is the heart of the In- finite love and Infinite power, and that he rejoices to be able to use his power in order to glorify his love. Jesus " looked " on Peter ; and that look broke his heart, but saved his soul. 432 CHIPS AND CHUNKS SUCCESSFUL FAILURES. It is not an entirely easy thing to decide what are successes and what are failures. Our limited faculties are exercised in the observ- ance of appearances, conditioned by so much that is infinite, and time and space have such power over facts, that no one who is not omniscient can judge what are to be the final outcomes of any thing that has already occurred. Therefore the men who live by faith and not by sight have not only more power than others, but actually more peace and comfort. All Christian life is an exercise and a discipline of faith. We must have perfect confidence in that providence which is always sure, although often so very slow. We cannot control the influences that are to play upon the actions of our lives in the long future, but we have control over the present action. We must do the thing that is right now ; we must discharge our present duty. That is all that concerns us. No human being could live under the prodigious weight of responsibility for all the results of his actions. There- fore the righteous Judge of all the earth holds us responsible only for our actions. Every Christian thinker who has observed the results of his actions in the past, so far as he could trace those results, must frequently have seen that what at the moment he thought a success has after- ward been shown to have been a failure. It seems, however, to be a characteristic of human nature to mark the failures rather than the successes of one's life. It is this which makes so much moral weakness among men and which proves such a discouragement to even sincere Christians. It is wholesome, therefore, to make note of every passage in life which seemed at the time to be a failure but afterward bore fruit of blessing for ourselves or others. No class of Christian workers are so liable to be discouraged as preachers of the Gospel. They so long to see immediate results. They are " keyed " so high that if circumstances do not sing up to their pitch they have a painful sense of discord and failure. I am minded to set down in this ar- ticle some facts which have come to my knowledge, which have encouragingly strengthened my own faith and may be helpful to my FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 433 beloved brethren in the ministry of " the Gospel of the blessed God ; " and the principle underlying them should be very sustaining to all who work for Christ. A few evenings ago I was the guest of a venerable and honored Presbyterian pastor in Alabama. Among other things he said that one night he went to his church much depressed ; the weather was disagreeable, the congregation was unusually small, and when he concluded the service he felt that it was a lost evening from which he supposed no fruit would ever come. It was weeks afterward, when he opened the religious paper of his Church, published in Louisville, Ky., and without any special reason, before he laid the paper down, he turned to the Children's Department, which he had seldom looked at, when his eye was caught by the name of a little girl among his parishioners. It was attached to a letter in which the child had given a pretty fair account of the sermon he had reck- oned lost, embodying some sentences which had specially impressed her. It was done so well that the editor had seen fit to publish it. Here was a great enlargement to his audience. Some time after that he saw a poem from the pen of an American poetess, who had been struck by a sentence or two in the child's letter and had taken them as the theme of her poem. And so it turned out that the pith of that apparently lost discourse had been conveyed to a larger con- gregation than probably any other thing he had ever uttered. One Sunday evening, in another place, the threatening weather kept away almost all the congregation of an Episcopal church, and soon after the service opened it began to rain violently. To the rector it looked like a failure, and at the close he went home under the weight of that depression so well known to anxious pastors. There was in that parish a very respectable gentleman, generally regarded as skeptical about religious matters. Early on Monday morning he made his appearance at the rectory. It was his first visit to the pastor, and was naturally a surprise. The visitor waived all preliminaries and said earnestly, " My dear sir, I have come to ask you what I must do to be saved ! " He explained that his skepticism had been merely of that nature which kept him from believing that religion was a subject of any vital and personal importance to him- self, but that he had stepped into the church the evening before to 434 CHIPS AND CHUNKS shelter himself from the sudden shower, and that a passage in a hymn that had been sung so aroused him to his own spiritual danger that all night long he had been most deeply anxious about his spir- itual condition, and he felt that nothing else was worth attention until he had settled the question of his personal salvation. His conversion, which began with the service considered a failure, be- came an unspeakable blessing to that town. Many years ago a young Methodist preacher, just of age, was put up to preach at a camp-meeting in North Carolina. There were many older preachers present, and the youth was much abashed. He preached the Gospel the best he knew how, but was so ashamed of his performance that at the close of the service he left the place immediately and never went back, and had a sense of mortification whenever he heard the name. A quarter of a century later he was walking down Front Street, in Wilmington, when a gentleman meet- ing him hurried his steps and said, " I do believe this is Dr. ." " That is my name," was the reply. " Do you recollect preaching at B camp-meeting?" " Alas ! I can never forget that wretched failure." " Failure do you call it ? Why, sir, there were four of the wild- est young fellows in C County converted under that sermon, and I was one of them ; and by the grace of God I have been preaching the Gospel twenty years." Then he learned that the Lord's embassadors can never make any other than successful failures. In the village in which I am writing this article, while waiting for my train to take me to the town in Georgia where I lecture to-night, a minister, who is a faithful pastor and has a devoted wife, preached under circumstances of discouragement, and as he left the church said, " Wife, that was a failure ; wasn't it?" Her reply was that a lady belonging to another Church had come at the close of the service and requested the wife to thank her husband for a sermon which had been very helpful to at least one listener's soul. Let us all take heart. Let us do our very best every time. Let us leave the seed we have sown to him that is Lord of the harvest. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 435 Let us make known to our pastors and other ministers the ser- mons which have been specially blest to us. Let us trace what we have considered failures to their " afterward," that our faith may be confirmed in God's assurance that his word shall not return to him void. " HEREAFTER." Space and time, both on the natural plane and the spiritual, have certain ideal connections. For instance, in the former, any fabric or structure or other visible thing presents one view from its front and another from its rear. Therefore, being before or behind any thing makes a very great difference. A visitor coming in front of a Gobelin tapestry, even when the last stitch has been put in by the artist, can have no idea from the hanging tags and threads what the design is. But often, when he goes behind the frame, the whole of it breaks upon him with the power and beauty of painting. So it is with time. " The coming event casts its shadow before," even when it is drawing its trailing garments of glory behind. It was a good conceit, that we never see the wings of Time until he has passed. He seems very slow in coming to us, but he goes away with great rapidity. It is ruinous self-deception not to take the afterward into account in every department of life. In business it is one thing to look at the transaction as proposed by another or projected by ourselves ; it is another to take into the account what will probably, in the nature of things, follow afterward. At the table it is one thing to consider the sweetness and delicacy of the viands and the strength of the call of appetite. It is another thing to consider the effect of any meal we may eat upon our bodily health. At dinner always consider after dinner. It is so in social life. A deed may in itself be trivial at the mo- ment of its performance, or a w T ord at the moment of its utterance. The saying of " yes " or " no " is not difficult to those who have the use of vocal organs, but from every "yes" and every ''no" there will probably come a series of events which must have great effect upon our own lives and upon the lives of others. 28 436 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Both with God and man " the Now " must be, that " the Here- after " may be. That is a truism which it were not worth while to utter if it did not seem somehow to be generally ignored. Where " the Hereafter" is almost sure to be more pleasant than " the Now " we are intensely desirous of leaping over the one into the other. We are perpetually fooling ourselves, even in spiritual matters, with the desire to purchase without paying. " The Here- after " is very often the child of " the Now." What I am doing at this moment is as necessary for certain results which I wish to attain as cause is to effect. In a large measure — studying my own experience and that of many others — I can calculate somewhat the effect ; but there is one great factor, which the Christian must always consider, in what is to come afterward ; namely, what the free will of God will do with the prod- ucts of the free will of man. Now, we cannot calculate that; only that it will certainly appear that God is not indifferent to any thing there is in the universe, that every thing touches him, and he touches every thing intelligently and voluntarily. Our Master said to one of his disciples, " What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." It is a blessed thing for us that we do not know the hereafter of our Lord. If we did we might be perpetually interfering with it. We should certainly lose much of freedom of action, and in some cases the discipline through which the Master is going to take us in the next few years. Hereafter might so par- alyze our energy as to break our lives and interfere with his great moral government. It is so blessed not to know ! On the other hand it is blessed to know. The love of our Lord is shown to us in that he conceals the things we ought not to know and reveals those which it is profitable to know. He does make this revelation : that he is doing something that concerns us, that he is greatly interested in what he is doing, and that the result will be such as shall be good for us. It is on this ground that the apostle bases his statement that " our light afflictions are working for us a weight of glory," while we are looking — and only while we are look- ing — at the things which are unseen. The unseen things are in " the Hereafter," and in poverty, sickness, distress, destitution, and spirit- ual perplexity, in the eclipse of the Sun of Righteousness, we know FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 437 that our darkness is only temporary, that in the near Hereafter the eclipse is sure to close, and as the intervening body is carried away from before the face of the sun by natural laws which prevail throughout the universe, so our spiritual eclipse will as surely terminate and by just as fixed laws in the spiritual world. The blessedness of " the Hereafter," also, is that, whereas the past is limited and the present is very limited, " the Hereafter " is bound- less. There are no possibilities in the past ; there are some in the present; there are all in " the Hereafter." " The Hereafter " adjoins " the Now." Twice in the gospels Jesus said, " Hereafter shall ye see; " and the words which he used meant that immediately after the time he spoke the things should begin to appear. Sometimes the causes of to-day produce their effects in long lapses of time. The hereafter of an action in boyhood may show itself in old age. The result of a good deed, of holy living, and of prayer, maybe delayed in the providence of God for a long season, but " the Hereafter " surely cometh. The good Father will never let break a single strand in the cable wherewith he holds the world to him- self. We should, therefore, patiently wait the Lord's coming, and neither hasten nor retard " the Hereafter." Believing his promises, hanging on his words, obeying his commands, we may safely leave "the Hereafter" without fear, without anxiety, and without de- spondency. THE GOLDEN RULE. What is called the Golden Rule is recorded in the Gospel accord- ing to St. Matthew (vii, 12) thus : " Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." Perhaps there is no single sentence which has been oftener quoted in its very words and in its paraphrases than this. A Latin form renders it thus : "Quod tibi, hoc alteri" which means, "What ye would have for yourself, that give to another." There is also a negative form of the precept : " Quod tibi ipsi odiosum est, proximo ne facias • nam hac est tota lex," which may be rendered: " Never do to your neighbor what is hurtful to yourself; for this is the whole 433 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Law." The paraphrase most in vogue is that of Matthew Henry, namely, " Do as you would be done by.'' In all ages and among all classes the precept has had immense admiration, from the day when the Emperor Alexander Severus caused it to be written in golden letters on the wall of his closet, quoted it often in the administration of public affairs, honored Christ as its author, and spared Christians for the sake of a religion which had set forth so admirable a precept. In the case of many men it seems to be the only passage in the Bible which they know, and there are those who profess it as the sum and substance of their religion. " Tota lex." They know no other law. And yet we submit that there is no sentence so often quoted which is so thoroughly misunderstood. Ordinarily he who employs it seems to think that it is a bridle put in his hand which he is to slip into the mouth of his neighbor to carry that neighbor whithersoever he would. The misapprehension lies in the idea that a man has a right to enforce the principle upon his neighbor. He has no such right. No human being is ever to quote it to another. He is to apply it to his own soul ; he is to make it the basis of an appeal to his own consciousness and to his own conscience, and never as the basis of an appeal to another. If this were kept in view men would be saved from the absurdities into which they are very frequently plunged by using this precept. Let us illustrate : We once heard a little boy pleading with his mother, who was correcting him, and this was the substance of the eloquent young urchin's appeal : " Now, mother, ain't you ashamed of yourself? You a great big woman, and me a little boy, and you licking me ! Now, mother, just suppose I was you and you was a little boy. Just think of that ! ' Do as you'd be done by,' mother! You know you would not want me to whip you ! " The child expressed the sentiment of a grown man who, having been caught and convicted of a crime, said in his heart, if not with his lips, as he received sentence at the hand of his judge : "Judge, now just put yourself in my place, and ' do as you would be done by.' How would you like to be sentenced to prison for all the rest of your natural life? How would you like to be torn from your FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 439 seat on the bench, from the comforts of your home, from the com- pany of your family, and be locked up in a prison ? " Of course the judge would not like it. But what has that to do with the case ? The culprit has no right to make such a demand ; he has to apply the precept to himself alone. He has to say: " Now, this judge is about to condemn me — I must do by him as I would have him do by me. Suppose he were in my position and I in his ; I should then, by my oath of office, be compelled to pronounce a sentence accord- ing to law and according to the verdict of the jury. How would I like to have that judge consider me, if I were judge and he were culprit? Should I not wish him to put all personal enmity out of his heart and regard me as simply discharging my bounden duty ? If so, then, although the words of that man will rivet the chains of imprisonment on me all the days of my life, I must regard him with- out enmity." Take another case : A poor man applies to a rich man for money: money to keep him from bankruptcy, money to stop the foreclosure of a mortgage that might turn him out of his home. He is think- ing, and perhaps uttering, this precept, " Do as you would be done by," and he wishes the rich man to fancy himself in the position of the distressed applicant, and to do with a portion of his wealth what he would wish the applicant to do for him if their positions were changed. But this was not the meaning of the great Teacher. The applicant has no right to fasten the precept on the conscience of his neighbor, but he must apply it to himself. He must say something like this : " Suppose I were this rich man, and suppose there were thousands of appeals to me like that which I present to him ; and suppose I should go to the poor-house in a week if I granted one-half; and suppose for this and other considerations, such as the present state of my business, with which he is unac- quainted, I should refuse him. Now, I must take his refusal just as I should wish him to take mine if I were he and were compelled to refuse him." The Golden Rule is not an iron rod. It is not to be laid on another. It is to be worn by myself, and worn as a beautiful ornament. Am I member of the Church ? I must not look at my pastor and say in my heart, if I do not utter it to him with my lips, " Sir, I wish 440 CHIPS AND CHUNKS you would put yourself in my place, and then ' do as you would be done by.' Suppose you were a rich man, whose soul almost every body neglected while every body fawns on him for favors ; how would you like to be treated ? That is the way you must treat me." " Suppose you were a poor man absolutely devoid of the luxuries of life, scarcely, indeed, able to procure the necessaries, and I were in your place, having what you now possess, while you had my poverty. How would you wish me to treat you ? Treat me so." That is not the way. Neither the rich member nor the poor mem- ber has any right to lay down the law to his pastor. He is not the judge of another man, certainly not of the man appointed to rule over him in spiritual things. But each of these men must lay the Golden Rule on his own heart and say: " Now, suppose I were the pastor, and suppose he, as a private member, could not know all the burdens of my heart, the hundreds of people whose troubles and cares and spiritual interests are laid on my conscience, my time invaded by a thousand calls, my pulpit demanding careful preparation ; and suppose when I was doing my very best, laying out my work each morning and following it conscientiously until late bed-time, feeling that the Lord knew that I was doing -my utmost ; how, then, should I desire my parishioners to regard me ? Just in that way I am going to think of my pastor." Now, let us come around on the other side and take the pastor's position. He has no right to look at his parishioner and say : " ' Do as you would be done by.' You have several horses and carriages, some of which you seldom use, and you see me plodding through snow and wet at night visiting the rich and poor, just where I think my divine Master would have me go. You know that I must main- tain a certain style of living in my house because of the company I see — a style very superior to that of my poorest members, but very inferior to that of my richest members. You know how you expect my wife and children to dress when they receive the visits of your wife and children. You know that with the greatest economy I barely make my salary cover these expenses, and that the comforts of my home are enjoyed by my people more than by myself. You ought, therefore, to make frequent contributions, or at least one day in the week put a carriage at my disposal for my pastoral visitations." FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 441 No ; the pastor has no right to say these things ; he would be binding the rule upon his parishioners instead of laying it upon his own heart. The pastor must put himself in the position of that rich man. See ! No man cares for his soul. He is surrounded by sycophants, he is flattered, he is made almost to feel himself a demi- god, he is exposed to spiritual perdition. The pastor must say : " Suppose I were in his place, in that prodigious peril, and suppose I were a conscientious preacher of the Gospel sent out to warn, rebuke, reprove, exhort, and entreat men, so that they may be saved ; how would I wish him to behave toward me ? That is my rule of behavior toward him. Suppose I were that poor man or that lone widow, or that deserted orphan. Suppose I were that young man in the midst of the city and in exposure; that young girl under a cloud ; that Christian brother, worn with labor or fretted by some physical disease; how would I like my pastor to behave toward me ? That must be my rule of behavior." All the more, because no other man dare lay it on him, must the pastor bind this rule on his own conscience. Now, look at those men whose whole religion, as they themselves profess, consists in doing " as they would be done by." Does any one of them always observe? No. Every man who makes that utterance must, upon examination of his life, discover that his claim to religion on this ground is wholly without foundation. " Do as you would be done by." Stop a moment and think. You are bound to apply that rule to yourself in regard to the dead man as much as you are to the living man. You must consider how you would wish men to treat your memory and your money after you have departed this life ; and that should be the rule of your behavior toward them. Is it?- Not at all. THE FIELD AT HAND. There are many persons in the Church who often feel a desire to be useful. When they reflect upon the great work which is yet to be done ; when they think of the halo which crowns and glorifies the names of the blessed dead who have served their generation, or when they read of some tremendous blow which has been dealt 442 CHIPS AND CHUNKS by a powerful arm to the idol which the world worships, or hear of some encounter on the great moral battle-field, in which the spiritual prowess of some lofty soul has turned the tide of war against the banners of Error — they long to do something which shall leave its mark on earth and carry its trophies to heaven. If all these long- ings resulted according to their dreams how many a glorious institu- tion would rise amid the world's crying wants ! how many an idle temple would be supplanted by a sanctuary of the most holy faith ! how many a dark place of the earth, wherein dwelleth cruelty, would be penetrated by the cheerful and healthful light of the Sun of right- eousness ! Why, with so many desires to do good, are they so com- paratively useless ? Is the defect in their heads ? No ! it is in their hearts. Allow me, young Christian reader, to show this to you, if I can. You wish to be useful. The spirit of our blessed religion is the spirit of doing good. It is also an enlarging spirit. " The field is the world " is a grand saying never to be forgotten. But your dif- ficulty is that you wish to sow the whole field over with one single grand broad-cast which shall fling into every furrow at once seed that shall instantly spring to a harvest to gladden earth, and, if possible, astonish heaven. You are not willing to take the little plot just before your door and clear it out by the patient picking out of rocks and grubbing up of roots ; that work is all too little for you and too unromantic. You will not have the stimulus of a thousand seeing eyes and a thousand encouraging smiles. Does not this show that there is something wrong at the heart ? You would be a missionary to China. You would like to be a Mrs. Judson, to have memoirs written of you when dead, and thousands of copies of volumes of memorial offerings published, with your name on the title instead of hers. That would be very fine. But you forget the fact that you do not labor faithfully, devotedly, without pride or vanity, in the nearest Sabbath-school, among the poor rieglected adults or children living on the same square in the same city with you, per- haps, or certainly within a mile or two of your father's residence — that you are not striving to make that father's family a model of a perfect Christian household, not training your brothers and sisters to the ways of the cross, not striving to bring the servants of the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 443 household to the blessed Saviour of us all ; that this failure on your part is positive proof that you are not ready to go from home to work for Jesus. Remember that those who go — if there be such deceived souls — to foreign lands for the mere name and grandeur of the thing have their reward on earth, and have nothing to look for in the skies. Remember, also, that a soul saved in your own village or at your own fireside, through your instrumentality, will shine as brightly in the crown which Jesus will give you, and will bring as much glory to his blessed name as though you found that soul in polar snows or oriental jungles. But you would be useful in your own country if you could only be sure that you possess such talents as such and such a one ; if you could only be a distinguished preacher, or could found or support an asylum, or a school, or some such benevolent institution. You have not yet discovered, perhaps — and the discovery may be painful to you when made — that some of the most talented, and, I will add, distinguished ministers of the Church are doing less for the cause of the Saviour than many an inferior and comparatively unknown brother. You forget that they are exposed to a thousand temptations which never reach the humbler and more hidden child of God. You do not recollect that the greatest injuries inflicted upon the Church of Jesus come from her most gifted sons. You are not to be judged by the measure which will be applied to them ; the rule for each to adopt in striving to do good is, Now, here, all I can, always. The disposition of the Church in this day would seem to be to undervalue, or at least to overlook the value of the plan of bringing men, soul by soul, to Jesus. We must do something splendid or nothing at all. The eclat of crowds, eloquence, magnificent machinery, is what attracts us. But suppose each member of the Church caught the soul-winning spirit and depended more upon God's blessing on the outshining of a holy heart in a holy life, and each so lived as in the course of every year to bring at least one more into the army of laborers — how soon would the world be converted ; thoroughly con- verted ! Read the memoirs of such humble men as Harlan Page and James Brainard Taylor, and then calculate upon the supposition that all church members did as much as they — and theirs was not a 444 CHIPS AND CHUNKS more favorable position than that of most Christians — and that the number of converts went on, as it should, in geometric ratio, and see how soon the world would be reclaimed to God and his Christ ! INSTRUMENTS. Our heavenly Father never does directly what he can do through others. He has begotten children in many respects like himself; like him in capability of knowing, feeling, acting; like him in the perfect freedom of their wills. He endows them. He gives them field. He gives them time. They must do all the rest. He will never do for any man, in any respect, what that man can do for him- self. He will never do for the race what the race can do for itself. He gives wood and iron and coal. But he never builds a vessel, hammers out a boiler, adjusts machinery, or raises steam. He never constructs a locomotive nor grades and lays a railway. He might have furnished Noah with a complete ocean steamer; but he did not. He let the patriarch hammer away at the ark through a century, but he did furnish him with the length, the breadth, and height, because there was no skill in him to discover these, and they could not be known by the light of nature. The eternal Father could, in the very beginning, have stocked the world with all the implements of agriculture and trade, with all the facilities for the most rapid and comfortable traveling, and the in- struments for scientific research, and have started his human family in housekeeping with every thing complete at once. But he did not. He put man down among the great acts of God, the great facts of the universe, the great laws of his government, with all the necessary physical, intellectual, and moral powers, and with due scope for their exercise, and man was to produce the result. God made the garden because man could not, and then set man to dress the garden because God would not. That has been his way ever, and will be his way forever. It is mere fanaticism to do or desire any thing different from this or contrary thereunto. It is reasonable to suppose that the eternal Father desires to have this earth brought to perfect cultivation, so that every spot shall be caused to bloom like the garden of the Lord or to be made like a FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 445 part of his holy temple, so that human life shall be enjoyed in its perfection and the physical universe be the minister of the divine soul of man. In a moment, in a twinkling of the eye, he could make it such. But he does not. It may be centuries. It maybe cycles. He leaves man to advance steadily, learning from falls and failures and mistakes, each generation improving on its predecessor, until the earth shall be subdued to man and man shall be subdued to the obedience of Christ. There was no Golden Age behind us except in the minds of the poets. There is a Golden Age before us, and to that we must continually stretch forward. The same rule obtains in the religious and spiritual man. We are taught the lesson that man's agency precedes God's working ; that in the spiritual regeneration of men there is first the agency of their fellow-men, doing all they can do, and then the power of the mighty God doing what man cannot do. Hence we have the operation of the law of human influence, of husbands and wives, parents and children, teachers and scholars. The heavenly Father will not do for our children what their earthly parents can do. He w 7 ill not exert his omnipotence one par- ticle toward building up our Church in what we can do ourselves. He will not clean and warm and ventilate the building, and sing the hymns, and preach the sermons, and pay the pastoral visits, and in- struct the Sunday-school. Because we can do these things we must. WITHOUT OFFENSE." [Read the first chapter of the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, and compare the 10th and 27th verses.] A characteristic of the Christian life on which the apostle Paul lays emphasis is inoffensiveness — " without offense," as he calls it in the 10th verse. The apostle probably intended by this to indicate two things ; namely, freedom from taking offense and freedom from giv- ing offense. There are some Christians who have such thin skins and long memories that the slightest thing that is disagreeable to them gives them not only immediate, but continuous pain. It is a bad habit of thought and feeling when a man is all the while imagining that every thing is done to offend him. Pastors and churches often see 446 CHIPS AND CHUNKS this displayed in a manner which is very trying. There are some Christians of whose presence you must always be aware; to whom you must always defer, whose feelings you must constantly study, and whose sensibilities you suspect that even your compliments will wound. They ordinarily consider themselves sensitive — that is the elegant and apologetic term which they apply to their characteris- tic ; whereas the real fact is that their skin has been eaten off by an excessive vanity and left the flesh bare, to be wounded by every feather and every thread that touches it. It is a most unchristian trait. A Christian man' is to conquer his self-consciousness. He is to have a heart at leisure from itself to sympathize with others. He is to be taken up so with his thoughts of others — their wants, their desires, their pleasure — not looking on his own things only but also on the things of others, that he will not pay attention to the man- ner in which he is treated until some direct and plainly intentional act is performed, or word spoken, in order to give him pain. Even then he will bear it meekly. Even apart from religious considera- tions a gentleman must cultivate the habit of supposing that every speech made of him is intended to be complimentary. If it does not sound so he must conclude that it was a compliment infelicitously worded or awkwardly expressed. If a friend seems to slight him it is only generous to suppose that that friend may be greatly pre- occupied with some important business or harassing anxieties. Christians should be full of all kinds of charitable suppositions. The writer knows many cases illustrative of this quickness to take offense, but will give the reader only the two latest that have been told him. There was a pastor in a large city into whose church there came a young girl whose parents had seen better days, and who was then employed in business to make a livelihood. She did this so bravely that it quite won the pastor's respect. He gave her his at- tention, interested himself in all her connections ; he visited her in tenement houses, many a time climbing weary stairs to pay her pas- toral visits, cheer her and pray w T ith her. In the course of years he came to regard her as a daughter. He married her to her husband. He baptized her children. He met her from Sunday to Sunday with the kind and respectful familiarity with which a Christian gentleman treats his intimates. One Sunday, after an absence, at the close of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 447 the service, when he descended the chancel, a number of persons came to speak to him. Among them was a stranger, to whom the pastor gave his right hand, expressing his thanks for the courtesy of speaking to him and encouraging the stranger to revisit the church. His friend came up to him at the same moment and stretched out her hands, and, having but one hand disengaged, he gave it to her. It was the left hand. She fired at such a slight as this. The pastor had not even noticed it, and probably never would have known it if she had not complained to other persons who in- formed him. He immediately sought her. She was absent from home. His visit was returned by a letter from her husband request- ing her church letter. The pastor took it to her and said he would give it to her cheerfully to go to the church where she could receive the most spiritual benefit, but that it seemed quite natural that he should be informed what was the occasion of the breaking in this long friendship. She confessed it was the giving of the left hand, and nothing else. And so she went away, and so the pastor was made to feel that he was afraid to have an intimate friend in his congregation, lest he should presume upon the intimacy, and for that presumption do harm to some soul. The other one was this : A husband and wife sent for their letter to their pastor. He carried the letter to them and desired to know what had led to the change : whether they were about to move to another place. It turned out that the whole trouble was that a certain prominent officer had been in a store where the gentleman was clerk and had failed to recognize him and speak to him, and that the same official had allowed them to pass him as he stood in his pew-door and had not spoken to them. The pastor was afraid there was some mistake, and so he hastened to the official and asked him if he knew Mr. and Mrs. . He said, " I do not ; but I know that there are such persons, members of the church, and I have been anxious to become personally acquainted with them, and I trust that you will point them out to me or introduce them." Now, here was this church officer most innocently losing two members of the church. Whose fault was it ? Were they not quick to take offense? Were these lives just such lives "as becometh the Gospel of Jesus Christ ? " 448 CHIPS AND CHUNKS But, whether the apostle meant quickness at taking offense or not, it seems very clear that he must have meant by this phrase the un- necessary giving of offense. The word which he used meant run- ning against some one — the stumbling against him. Now, it is not to be supposed for a moment that any man who is at all a Christian will intentionally, with malice prepense, give any offense to any human being. The trouble is this — as an English poet says : Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart. Men have no right to drive their horses furiously through a crowded city. Christians will be careful not even to run selfishly, with eagerness, where they may knock men down. The world must be made to feel that every compact which a Christian man seeks to make with it is a compact for its comfort, support, and guid- ance. A life which does not make this impression is an offen- sive life, and men may make what apology their selfishness shall dictate and their ingenuity frame, but still it stands to reason that that kind of life is unchristian. If I be a Christian I must think of others. I must care for them. I must see how I go through the world lest I stumble upon them. A Christian man is not only to abstain from deliberately rushing at a man to knock him down, but he is to be careful to keep himself from stumbling lest he fall against the man and knock him down. It seems to be this inof- fensiveness which is the characteristic described in the phrase of the apostle. ABOUT SHIPS. An ideal voyage between New York and Liverpool would be along a line represented by the curve made on a globe by the application of the edge of a ruler whose ends should touch both places. On a plane it would be called a straight line. But what ship ever made such a voyage? What ship could be so navigated as to never be turned from an absolutely direct course ? Such a result would re- quire the same condition of wind and wave at every point of the voyage. It would also require unerring readings of the nautical al- manac, the chart, the observations of the heavenly bodies, and the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 449 same continuous physical and mental condition of the navigator. The hand on the tiller that steers the vessel must never vary in nerv- ous and muscular conditions. If not among the certain impossibili- ties such a voyage must be ranked with the high improbabilities. If all the tackings and changes of a vessel making the longest voy- age between the places could be drawn on paper we should see a very remarkable picture, but it would be the picture of a vessel that had actually started from New York and had actually reached Liver- pool. That must not be forgotten. If we could have a similar picture of the real course of a vessel which had made the shortest trip, with all this vessel's deviations from a direct course, even that would show many angles made, many a compass of miles unnecessarily traversed, and therefore a longer voyage than the ideal. We have considered the deflections of a ship under government and possessing the equipment requisite for its guidance. Suppose a vessel without helm, without compass, and even without pilot, set out in the ocean, clear of land, on the direct line between New York and Liverpool, duly headed to the latter port, and left to wind and tide, all sails properly set. How many chances are there in a billion that such a ship would ever reach Liverpool ? Now, suppose an intermediate case : that of a ship with a pilot and a rudder but no compass, no chart, and no instrument for taking observations. She would be steered by guess and have all the chances of weather encountered by the other two. It is conceivable that she might be brought to the desired port. It is just possible ; not prob- able. If it did occur what a picture the lines of her courses would make on a map ! Are not men like ships upon the sea? Only one has made the ideal voyage from the port of birth to the haven of heaven, without deviation, without deflection, plowing through every wave, plowing through every storm, keeping straight on without pause. It was JESUS. When we look at all others we find that the stanchest, strongest, swiftest sailors of them all have made many a deviation and many a put-back, suffered many a deflection, although at last they have dropped anchor in the desired haven. The maps of the actual courses 45 CHIPS AND CHUNKS of such good ships as Abraham, Israel, David, Paul, and Peter are instructive to angels and to men. The result of a fair study of these would yield comfort to all hon- est Christian people who are bound for heaven. We are not all equally well-built for speed or strength. We encounter various weathers. Sometimes we are driven along the ideal line with cheer- ing rapidity. Sometimes we are driven back by disheartening storms. Often — O, how often ! — we are carried far north of our course or far south. Shall we ship the rudder? Shall we throw the chart and compass overboard and drift ? We know the doom that will follow that. No ! We will keep the faith and face the sea. We will work at the pumps when a leak is sprung. We will shift sails when needed. We are bound for heaven, and we are making headway, be it ever so little ! Such a study will correct our judgment and augment our chanty. That other craft, our brother Christian, is beaten about by many a wind, and is often, apparently, water-logged. But he heads toward heaven and gets on as best he can. Let us not despair of him nor unjustly criticise him. What a terrific lurch did David make ! What a fearful leak did Peter spring ! Through how many a fog did Paul make his way ! But they all dropped anchor " within the veil." But let no man have false hopes of hearing the bells on the coast of heaven ring his arrival there if he abandon his rudder, cast away his compass, resign himself to be carried hither and thither by every wind of doctrine and every hurricane of passion. He will go down at sea or be shipwrecked on some reef. " The hope of the hypocrite shall perish." Brethren, are we " headed " aright ? Are we toiling in the storm ? Let us keep heart. Suddenly the heavenly Pilot may board us. When we seem far off from land, immediately we shall reach the haven where we would be. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 45 I ADVANCING. We need more positiveness. We need the habit of standing by the things that are settled. To that end each man needs to have some things settled for himself. Then when they are settled he must cling to them, and not to things which are still in question or in doubt. The trend of modern thought and expression demands attention to this matter. The fashion of thought lately seems to be to regard that man the most " advanced " thinker who has thought out the very least. Men's abilities have been measured, not by what they know, but by what they do not know ; not by what they believe, but by what they doubt. A speaker who harangues on the difficulties which exist in matter and in mind will attract attention and elicit applause, while a teacher who instructs us in what is not difficult to compre- hend, but which is of inestimable value in practical life, is regarded as dull and ^advanced. This cant of "advanced" thinkers is leading multitudes into bogs, into impenetrable forests, into pitfalls. Men must " advance ! " That is the cry. But why? What is the use of always advancing ? May it not be well occasionally to stand still ? Certainly, unless you know what ground you are going to tread, you would better not move for- ward. By all means let us advance ; but let us advance along the ground which has been ascertained to be solid, and let us advance by methods which shall secure safety with progress. Let some things be regarded as settled. Surely, if the human race has been exercising its reason through so many ages, something must be settled, if reason be worth anything to man. There may be sub- jects which men will question in some places which no man of honor will question in another. In all Christian and Jewish households, pulpits, and publications, surely these things ought to be considered settled forever, not even to be reopened or discussed ; namely, that there is a God and Saviour ; that the Bible is the word of God, the rule of faith and practice ; and that man's moral nature is developed and purified by obedience to the word of God. The children in such households should no more discuss any one of these matters 29 452 CHIPS AND CHUNKS than they should discuss the chastity of their mothers. The man who in the presence of members of such households treats any one of these subjects as not yet settled — if he is not a fool, destitute of all knowledge of what constitutes honor — is a base seducer. Within those bounds he who advances makes progress on secure ground ; but he who advances beyond those bounds falls over a precipice. DAVID'S SLEEP EXPERIENCE. In the third psalm there is a verse which, however superficially read, it is pleasant to hear: " I laid me down and slept. I waked, for the Lord sustained me." It is very easy for a Christian in ordinary circumstances to make that statement. Indeed, any man who believes in the superintend- ing providence of the good God might say those words ; but they have a peculiar significance as uttered by David, in his circumstances. It is to be remembered that the psalm was composed when he was fleeing from Absalom, his son. His enemies were multiplying. His friends appeared to be failing. There were many who said of his soul, " No help for him in God." But David trusted in God and prayed to the Lord, and felt sure that Jehovah heard him from his holy hill of Zion. To show the effect of this faith upon his mental and physical condition he uses three words which are very striking under the circumstances. He savs first, " I laid me down." The word used here in the orio-- inal denotes preparation and peace. He did not tumble down upon his couch, but he regularly prepared himself for bed and quietly lay down to sleep, as one does whose business has been completely fin- ished and who has no anxiety about the morning. His second word is, " I slept." It does not imply a mere catching of such sleep as a soldier may obtain through the night watches after a toilsome day — a slumber made torturous by his thoughts and broken by his anxiety. It was sleep ; God's gift of balm. It was not the heavy slumber of one who has cast himself into sleep as one might spring into a well till those who hunted him had passed by. This is indicated by what follows. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 453 His third word is, "I waked." It does not signify a starting out of sleep as when one is frightened. It shows that he was not over- whelmed in a deep slumber. He went to bed at his regular hour. He took his natural, healthy sleep, and when that was finished he naturally awoke. The Lord had sustained him. This is a more beautiful and touching picture of the triumph of faith than we sometimes see in its more heroic aspects. When a man is engaged in action, pushing things about him and making things fly, even when surrounded by enemies, the very exertion in- creases his faith, but when, surrounded by hostile forces that are con- stantly increasing, a man has such trust in the Lord that his sleep is not invaded, when he can lie down in quiet like a baby in its mother's lap, and fall asleep in the arms of God, this is a triumph of faith that is beautiful indeed. What is there more valuable for life than that which brings healthy, natural sleep ? Our activities are good only as they bring about that state of fatigue which makes sleep sure and sweet. It is a triumph of faith that it can accomplish this. In times of peace many a man is so beset by the cares of business that unless he secures for himself a sufficiency of good and natural sleep he cannot keep his health and sustain himself in his work. Merchants, mechanics, lawyers, physicians, men of all professions and occupa- tions in this busy life, must sleep or be unfitted for their work. Bet- ter than all narcotics is simple trust in the sustaining, gracious prov- idence of the good God. In view of this a study of David's sleep experience will be profitable. THE "LARGE UPPER ROOM." When the evening was approaching on which our Lord was to eat the passover for the last time with his disciples he sent forward to Jerusalem two of them, honored Peter and John, to " make ready." He told them in advance that they should be so directed as to find " a large upper room, furnished " — that is, having divans, cushioned. " There make ready," said he. There may be something instructive for us in this latest economic direction of our Lord. He knew the solemnity of this feast He 454 CHIPS AND CHUNKS knew that he intended to substitute for it a eucharistic feast which should be perpetuated through the ages. He knew that he was ap- proaching his death. There had been no pomp in his life. He had not cultivated the aesthetic. He attached little importance to externals. But on this occasion there should be nothing mean — nothing that showed parsimony. He would have the best room in the house, a large upper chamber, where he should feast with his disciples without inconvenience and without distraction. We who are his followers in this later day of the world profess to give him invitations to be the guest of our lives. Do we prepare for him? Where is the large upper chamber? Let us look at our thoughts as at a house. What space we give to business ! There is plenty of room for plans and purposes and speculation. From morn until night, often almost all the night, sometimes much of the hallowed Sabbath day, there is space for bargaining, for buying, for selling, and for the investment of our gains. In some of us nearly the whole house is thus occupied, the remainder being given to plans for pleasures and enjoyment, for the advancement of our families in social rank, for our own social or po- litical advancement, for the claims which society has upon us, or which we acknowledge as the dues of " our party." In some of us every possible accommodation is made for our studies, for the culti- vation of our intellects, without any purpose to use the result for either the aggrandizement of ourselves or the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom among men. What room is given to Jesus ? Let us look at our affections as a house. We love — how many things and persons we do love ! Some of us love more things than persons ; some of us more persons than things. Our parents, our wives, our husbands, our children, our kinsmen and friends, have the amplest room and the best. We warm at the thought of them ; we embrace, caress, and cherish them. Sometimes we go so far as to say, " I love you with my whole heart." The affections of some of us are given almost wholly to certain indulgences, legitimate pursuits and pleasures — legitimate until they engross us. Let us go through every room in our hearts and put the name of the occupant on the door. An angel going through would naturally expect to find Jesus FOR E I r ER Y FIRESIDE. 45 5 in " the large upper room." But there is another name on that door. Where is Jesus? We thought he was somewhere in the house. We were sure that the examining angel would find him. It is true that we gave him no special room. We may have deceived ourselves in supposing that we had said, " Take. any room, Lord." But he is no such guest as to be indefinitely invited. In point of fact, we may not have set apart a single separate room. We have not been at pains to examine from day to day to see if he was in any room. And lo ! the angel does not find him. He would have come into " a large upper room, furnished." But that we could not spare, alas! even to Jesus. Consider the advantage of giving a large upper room to Jesus in the day. Some Christians plunge at once into the morning paper and then rush off to business, giving the latest hour in the day, the hour of bodily and mental exhaustion, to their devotional exercises. Try the other method. Give the first, the upper room, to spiritual exercises. Make it as large as you can. If needful, rise an hour or a half hour earlier. Let your papers and letters, however pressing, lie unopened. Have your Bible, your book of prayers, your hymn book, or some other collection of devotional poetry ; a little holy library to itself. Read prayerfully. You will be surprised to find how often, as if by some providential arrangement, you will come upon something which seems specially to have been written for your present state of mind. You will soon see how this exercise helps your mind to take up its business or intellectual problems for the day, and how this morn- ing serenity seems to help even your bodily health. The late Hon. William E. Dodge was for years a merchant prince in New York. He carried the heavy loads of large businesses, and it was his ad- hesion to the practice of giving at least one hour, and often more, the first of the day, to his books of devotion and to prayer, which is believed to have given him much of his elasticity and endurance. The Lord who had the " large upper room, furnished," sanctified all the smaller and lower departments of his house of life, and made it the " House Beautiful." 45 6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS SPIRITUAL DYSPEPSIA. Of all the ills that flesh is heir to dyspepsia is ordinarily regarded as one of the worst. It is not only a local distress, but a general misery. Its force of torment is not all spent upon the body ; it seems to reach the mind. A dyspeptic is gloomy, peevish, morose ; and if he do not show these characteristics it is because he is in constant effort to repress their symptoms. Spiritual dyspepsia bears a striking likeness to its physical twin- brother. A man who is spiritually a dyspeptic is spiritually weak and spiritually darkened ; and if he have any disposition to avoid reputation for these characteristics he is engaged in a constant ef- fort at self-repression. Bodily dyspepsia is very frequently produced by eating too rapidly and eating too much. The less a man masticates his food the larger amounts can he swallow, and the more-unchewed food enters his stomach the worse for the stomach and the worse for the whole man. The digestive organs commence their work under the disadvantage of having to discharge their own functions and at the same time the functions that ought to have been discharged by the saliva in slow eating. The consequence is that they do their own work insufficiently and must leave that of mastication undone. It will follow that there shall lie in the stomach a mass of undigested and indigestible matter, and this matter is got rid of by decomposi- tion, and this decomposition produces gases whose acridity dam- ages the finest portion of the stomach and superinduces much disease. Even where a man has paid sufficient attention to his eating it is absolutely necessary that he take a good degree of bodily exercise in order to keep the digestion in healthy operation ; for the intent of food is to supply those wastes of the body which are produced by action. The strength that a man derives from his food must be spent in physical motion. A wise man will study this adaptation and conform his habits to it. He will work his body as much as he should and eat no more than he ought. Spiritual dyspepsia is produced in the same way. Truth is the food of the spirit. The word of God is that truth. A man takes it FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 457 for himself directly from the Bible, or from those who, having in them the truths of the Bible, are propagating those truths by speech or writing. Most Christian men receive their spiritual food from the pulpit. This food must be used just as the bodily food. It is not profitable to a man unless he can incorporate it with his spirit- ual constitution. Bread and meat must be assimilated into bone and flesh and nerve, to do the man any good. Whatever he takes, but does not assimilate, is an imposition upon his body. So with the word of God. That a man may be able inwardly to digest it he must take it slowly. By processes of the soul, which are similar to those of the teeth, he must prepare the spiritual food to be assimilated with his spiritual constitution. Then he must in- wardly digest it ; and then all the spiritual muscle, spiritual nerve, and spiritual vital force must be put into activity. This will cause the truth to produce its ultimate and intended effect. It will keep the spiritual constitution in good health and good play ; it will in- crease the hearty, wholesome hunger of the soul, and send it back to the bread of life and the waters of salvation with a keener relish and still sweeter enjoyment. The word of truth which we heard last Sunday we must be using all this week ; otherwise we shall return to the teachings of the pulpit spiritual dyspeptics, a very little portion of last Sunday's food assimilated, and a great portion lying in us decomposing and pro- ducing its acrid gases ; for if a man " hold a truth in unrighteous- ness," and do not use that truth, he will come to hate it. It will be, as it were, an undigested lump ; a perpetual distress ; he will fight against it, he will loathe it, he will desire to throw it off. Some- times a misused truth is worse than a very grave error ; for the error may be like an overdose of poison, which the spiritual stomach nat- urally and instinctively rejects. It is very clear in spiritual dyspepsia, as in physical dyspepsia, that the evil grows. A man may receive a truth readily, but may make no use of it in his practical life. He will find himself, there- fore, less ready to receive the next truth, as, when a man is in the beginning of dyspepsia, he finds his appetite commencing to grow capricious. There is no safety for any man but in the constant use in practical 458 CHIPS AND CHUNKS life of every truth he knows. If under the preaching of the sermon he is convinced that it is duty to pursue a certain course — a duty he had never seen before — and if he dally with his doubts and his old habits, he will become a spiritual dyspeptic, uncomfortable in himself and disagreeable to others. Mere theories of truth, however ortho- dox they may be, are of no avail unless they lead to practical good living. Only that man can be said to be perfectly healthy and of high Christian character who resolutely employs all his life in the active use of Christian truths which he has learned from the Bible and from the living minister. If every man in any congregation would spend six days of the week in doing just what his pastor taught on the last Sunday the whole congregation would return on the next with such a spiritual appetite that it would be absolutely delicious to feed them. The minister would be stimulated to find new food and stronger. Then, as each man worked, the practical Christianity of his life would have more power in drawing others to hear the word of God than all the chimes of all the bells in Christendom. And so in point of size, of spiritual strength, and of growing activity, that Christian congrega- tion would increase. There is no pleasure without health ; there is no health without right eating and proper activity. It is so in the body. It is so in the spirit. Spiritual dyspeptics lose almost all the pleasures of liv- ing and have almost all the pains ; for, as physical dyspepsia dark- ens the mind, spiritual dyspepsia injures the body. When David spoke of God as being the " health of his countenance " he uttered not only a high religious sentiment, but also a profound philosophic truth. It is easier for the soul to bear the ills of the flesh than for the flesh to sustain the ills of the soul. The spirit of man can bear his infirmities ; but a wounded spirit who can bear? "WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?" In the month of June, 1880, 1 was visiting a friend on Hampstead Hill, London. She had been one of my traveling companions in the Holy Land. Her home was charming, and her intimate friend and St \ ) ' i «li S tin 4 «H L\ is J i . FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 459 neighbor, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, was Mrs. Charles, the writer of The Sckonberg-Cotta Family. My friend has a quiet way of doing good things, so that I dare not mention her name, and am afraid to say that she supports an orphanage, for fear this article fall into her hands. In that pleasant home of help, among other things, I saw the illuminated motto, "What would Jesus do?" I had never seen it before, and it greatly impressed me. That afternoon I was in the home of her rector, the Rev. Edward H. Bickersteth, known all over the Christian world as the author of " Yesterday, To-Day, and Forever," a poem perhaps oftener read than any other religious poem of similar length which has appeared since the days of John Milton's " Paradise Lost." I happened to mention the impres- sion the motto made on me, when Mr. Bickersteth said that he had written verses on the motto, as it had impressed him as it had me. At my request he was kind enough to read them to me, and at my solicitation presented me the original, which I preferred even to the copy Mrs. Bickersteth was kind enough to offer to make for me. I am glad that I did so, as I now have the opportunity of showing the appearance of the distinguished author's autograph. Mr. Bick- ersteth has since become the Lord Bishop of Exeter. Besides gratifying a natural curiosity the sight of the original poem will be a lesson of painstaking to young writers. The autograph is not so very plain that all can read it with ease. The following is the poem : When the morning paints the skies And the birds their songs renew, Let me from my slumbers rise, Saying, " What would Jesus do? " Countless mercies from above Day by day my pathway strew ; Is it much to bless thy love ? Father, " What would Jesus do ? " When I ply my daily task And the round of toil pursue, Let me often brightly ask, " What, my soul, would Jesus do ? " 4 5o CHIPS AND CHUNKS Would the foe my heart beguile Whispering- thoughts and words untrue. Let me to his subtlest wile Answer, " What would Jesus do ? " When the clouds of sorrow hide Mirth and sunshine from my view, Let me, clinging to thy side, Ponder, " What would Jesus do ? " Only let thy love, O God, Fill my spirit through and through ; Treading where my Saviour trod, Breathing, " What would Jesus do ? " E. H. B. 28 May 1880. THE EVENING LAMP im FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 463 THE EVENING LAMP. INDIRECT INFLUENCE OF METHODISM. Methodist writers can point to a very great and growing direct in- fluence of Methodism upon the nations during the past century and show that that direct influence has been highly beneficial. If there were nothing else they could show the vast columns of statistics of those who have been gathered into the various Methodist organiza- tions, those who have been born of Methodist parents, and those who, on Methodist lines, have expended their whole lives in laboring for the spiritual advancement of mankind. Leaving that work to those who are Methodists the present writer simply designs to point out a few of the lines of the indirect influence of Methodism which seem to him to have made it the creditor of the whole of Christendom. The first of these is its political influence. We must remember that it began its work in England in the middle of the eighteenth century, when England was not making that progress toward the front of nations which has marked her career since the time that Methodism was fully and powerfully at work in Great Britain. In- deed, that country has scarcely had a darker period than that at which John Wesley providentially appeared upon the scene. There is probably no more powerful picture of that period than that painted by Buckle {History of Civilization in England, p. 107), in which there is shown the affliction which befell the country by the accesssion of George III., and the incubus which that reign of sixty years laid on the people. The king opposed everything good and patronized every thing bad. He discarded good and able men from his coun- cils, and surrounded himself by only those who, being already cor- rupt, were his tools, or by men whom he could corrupt, like William Pitt. He fastened slavery on Virginia, drove his ministers into a war with France, and saddled the country with a national debt so great that no thoughtful person supposes it will ever be able to pay. The House of Commons had become mainly a mob of "ignorant 464 CHIPS AND CHUNKS fox-hunting squires," and the House of Lords was lowered in its character by the numerous bad creations of peers made by the fatu- ous monarch. Every thing seemed going from bad to worse, and upon none did the burden fall more than upon the common people. And then came the French revolution ; a prodigious event, so appall- ing that it not only overturned thousands of smaller minds, but had such power as to overthrow even so noble an intellectual structure as that of Edmund Burke. It is to be remembered that, goodly and strong as is the structure of a government wholly administered by any aristocracy, however noble and cultivated, at last the mass of the people has the destiny of a kingdom in its own hands. They are like the fabled monster in the sea on which men " landed," mistaking it for an island. They built their fires and cooked their food and fell to junketing, all which had so small an impression on the sleeping monster that he did not move until the fire made him a little restless, when he turned over ! Now, a "turn over" is simply plain English for revolution. "When the people grow tired of us I suppose we must pack up our trunks," the present Prince of Wales is reported to have said. I suppose the prince was right. When the King of England and his ministers were perpetrating all possible political " fooleries " which made the case of the poor day-laborer, on farm or in mine, more and more doleful until it was becoming intolerable, and when under their burdens they were excited by the political events on the Continent, it was Methodism, with its intelligent theology, Methodism, with its prac- tical beneficences, Methodism, with its thrilling hymns, that enlight- ened the mind and saved the consciences and cheered the breasts of the wretched colliers and other lowly folks among whom it went; kindling the light of hope beneath the pall of darkness which lay upon the land, and lifting the thatched roof of the English peasant as high as heaven, so that he should look at the things which were invisible until the things which were seen could be borne because they were temporal. When the future scientific and philosophical historian comes to the final analysis of English things in the last quarter of the eight- eenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century he will find that it was Methodism which providentially prevented such a turn-over of FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 465 the people as would have overturned the British throne, and that England owes more to her Weslcys and their Methodists than to her Wellingtons and their armies. If we turn to the American colonies just before and just after they became the new United States we find that one of the most impor- tant elements of success would have been wanting if there had not been some mode of intercommunication between the different and distant parts of a sparsely-settled country in which there were no railroads and no telegraphs. Would not all the hard-won fruits of Washington's campaigns have been lost if it had not been for the " men on horseback," the itinerant preachers, who went from New En- gland to the Carolinas? They were the connecting links. They passed from the north through the seat of government to the south, and back over the same routes. They preached the Gospel in the thin settlements, keeping the people cheered with the religious hopes, and, before falling asleep at night, told in the settler's cabin all they had heard in their journeyings. They were, generally uncon- sciously but not the less surely, the unifying element of American society. When a government was to be formed, these itinerants, not at all intent on political matters, passing rapidly hither and yon, were the shuttles that shot the woof of their new religion into the warp of the new political organization, and so made a fabric which now has endured both the wear and the tear of a hundred years. Amer- ica probably owes as much to the band of first Methodist itinerants as to the men who marched to Valley Forge. In poetic and historic justice, perhaps, in the rotunda of the national Capitol the com- panion picture to Washington's Farewell to his Generals should be Asbury's Ordination to the Episcopacy. [And yet to Asbury not one line is given in the Encyclopedia Britannica /] The indirect influence of Methodism on literature has yet to re- ceive its due estimate. Mr. W r esley's incessant writing, compiling, abridging and translating and publishing of books, large and small, religious and merely literary, is generally known. But one should trace the effect produced on literature generally by the distribution of books which he was able to effect by his system of lay-preaching and itinerancy. How many young British and American minds his books quickened who can tell ? But it is not difficult to see that to 4 66 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Methodism we owe a great cheapening of books and diffusion of printed matter, as well as mental quickening and the sharpening of the appetite for literature. There will be found by the critical his- torical student a link between Wesley's book-room at City Road Chapel and the great publishing houses at St. Paul's Church-yard, London, and 150 Nassau Street, and the Harpers' establishment on Franklin Square, to say nothing of the extensive operations of the specially Methodist publishing houses in London, New York, and Nashville. It will be found that these latter are not only post but propter. The very name Wesley gave his infant establishment, the first religious publishing institution in the world, is significant. It was the " Book Room!' Very exact, for the whole business could be at first conducted in a single small room in a small house. See to what proportions in the past century from Wesley's germ has grown the tree of religious publishing, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. It is suggested that some one make a list of the books written by men who are not claimed by Methodism, but who, like Lord Macaulay, had in early youth the inspiration and stimulus of Methodist homes. The indirect influence of Methodism on theology is sufficient subject for a whole treatise, which I trust some scholar, having the requisite leisure and ability, will sometime write. The theology of Methodism is not that of high Calvinism, on the one hand, nor is it that of the Arminianism which was the theology of the Dutch Re- monstrants in the sixteenth century. The latter was a reaction from the former. All that is true in both is preserved, while all that is false in either is rejected by the Methodist theology. The extreme Calvinism which looks at everything from the sove- reignty side of God, and the extreme Arminianism which looks at every thing from the freedom side of man, both lead to great errors, while both have for basis the revealed truth of God. The theology which can formulate all that and only that which the Bible reveals has for centuries been the want of the world. The most ardent Methodist would hardly claim that the earliest Methodist theolo- gians, including Mr. Wesley, did that much; but must not every impartial mind who has traced Methodist scholarship admit that the contributions of the Methodist writers through the last century to FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 467 this most desirable result surpass those which have come from all other quarters? And so it has come to pass that in circles considered Calvinistic the theology held by many is neither Calvinistic nor Arminian, but Methodistic. The influence of Methodist culture is extending among scholars. They reach the result by their personal investigations. Every new recasting of theologic metal is run in Methodist molds. The late Congregational Creed, in so far as it is an improvement, ap- proaches the form of Methodist — not Arminian — theology. When the " Confession of Faith " of the great and glorious Presbyterian Church shall come under revision those who are alive then are noti- fied that it will be an interesting study to compare the old and the new confessions with what shall then be considered the standards of Methodist theology. Ecclesiastically Methodism has had a very powerful influence. It has been a growingly impressive rebuke to all the claims of high churchliness while it has shown the great advantage of a strong or- ganization. So it has come to pass that both by dogma and custom, by doctrine and discipline, Methodism has trained men for every de- partment of the holy catholic Church, while setting an example of zeal which has inflamed the Churches. More than twenty years ago I was accompanied by the local servant of an American gentleman in Geneva to see the chapel in which at that time the historian, Merle D'Aubigne, was preaching. Asking this valet what manner of man might be this " Dr. Merle," as they called him, he replied in French that he was "nothing but a Methodist." "A Methodist? A Methodist? Well, what can that be?" I innocently asked. "O, he preaches as if he believed every word he said was true," was the reply. By taking the work of the Christian ministry out of the pro- fessions and preaching out of the conventionalities and yet main- taining the force and the fire of convictions that are reasonable, Methodism has warmed all the Churches into what Dr. Chalmers has called " Christianity in earnest." Not only has Methodism reached over and dropped blessings into neighboring communions, but it has sent messengers to the sur- rounding sects. Fifty pastors of the Reformed Church of France were furnished by Methodism. To-day I look around this city of 4 68 CHIPS AND CHUNKS New York and see those who were Methodists at work in the other Churches. There is the venerable Dr. Armitage at the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, the earnest Dr. Watkins at the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, the genial Dr. Collier at the Unitarian Church of the Messiah, the learned Dr. Marvin at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, the industrious Mr. Crafts at another Pres- byterian Church, the philosophic Dr. Rylance at the old Episcopal Church of St. Mark's, to say nothing of him who has the independent pulpit of the Church of the Strangers — all sons of Methodism, al- though now led providentially aside, as Mr. Wesley was in regard to the establishment — all honoring Methodism, loving her, and praying that her earthly history may cover many centuries, and her influence, direct and indirect, be spreading through eternity. 1882. " BAD NEW YORK," The reputation of this metropolis in the rural districts is not good. Even some of the old residents sometimes speak disparagingly oi their own city. But this, I think, is the common fate of capitals. In Great Britain it is " Bad London." In Germany it is " Bad Berlin." In France it is " Bad Paris." Well, New York is not good, but, so far as I know, it is as good as any other place in America. Visitors report a place as they have seen it. A man went to a town, with letters to the best families, had a warm welcome, en- joyed cultivated society, saw only the brightest part of the place, and went away with the impression that it was a little Eden. Dur- ing his stay, at the same moment, there was a forlorn traveler at the inn who had lost his money and had his baggage distrained to pay for his lodging, and left the town, on a dismal, rainy day, with the feeling that it was so wretched a place that he trusted he should never behold it again. We take from things what we bring to them. A man may come to New York, stay at a hotel of bad reputation, spend his days among sharpers and rogues, his evenings at the theater, and a large portion of his nights at the other houses of ill-fame, and go off, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 469 representing New York as a Gomorrah of wickedness. Another man, visiting the city at the same time, finds morning prayer in many a church and noon-day prayer in the very heart of business, and Lenten lectures delivered by earnest clergymen to large and serious congregations ; finds Young Men's Christian Associations, mission chapels, great public gatherings to promote large philan- thropic and religious designs, and every single hour of the day athrob with work, and goes away feeling as if he had been dwelling in the very suburbs of the New Jerusalem. It is of the nature of great cities to intensify, not to say aggra- vate, all the elements they contain. A mean man will become meaner in the city ; but a great man will become greater. The feeble waste away more rapidly in a city; but the strong wax stronger. The heat of the crowd inflames the passions of the bad and kindles the zeal of the good. Therefore when we come to sit in judgment on a city we are to consider all its characteristics together. Taking some sections of .the inhabitants, we might be compelled to say that they are worse than any proportionate num- ber of similar people in a smaller town or in a rural district ; but if that be true, on the other hand the liberal people are larger hearted, working Christians are far more active, and the true philanthropists are far more self-sacrificing than a proportionate number of similar men in a smaller town. It would be just as unfair to say "Good New York," thus lifting it above all the other places in the country, as to say "Bad New York," sinking it below the other places. New York is neither worse nor better than other places. There is only more of every thing in it. If I should render a verdict of the city only from my personal intercourse with the inhabitants I should say it was the best place on earth I had lived in ; and yet that would be exceed- ingly unfair to other towns where I have had my residence. They have been smaller. I am personally acquainted with more good, refined, cultivated, wise, active, liberal people in the city of New York than the entire population of any other town in which I have lived since I attained my majority. That should not blind my judgment to the fact of the wickedness of the criminal classes. In making judgment I must take all together. 30 47o CHIPS AND CHUNKS On the other hand, the city is not to be damned with a single epithet, by a judgment founded upon an inspection of those evils which exist in the human heart every-where and are simply aggra- vated by the very multitudinousness of a city population. . People abroad judge New York very much by our newspapers. They see crime after crime reported, with their details of horror re- cited at large, and comments and controversies thereupon ensuing, until a decent stranger might well be as much afraid to cross the ferry and walk our streets as to trust himself to the inhabitants of a cannibal isle. But with regard to the newspapers it must be remembered that they publish what is sensational because the one single, solitary rea- son for publishing a daily paper is to make money. The editors, therefore, feel bound to produce a marketable article ; and it is be- cause they know that readers in the quiet towns and rural districts will snatch up and read with avidity picturesque descriptions of the horrors of crime that column after column of such matter is printed. A drunken ruffian slays a citizen, it may be his father or wife. He is tried over and over; money and family influence are used in his behalf; and all this makes a great stir in the newspaper world. In the meantime ten thousand acts of mercy, as radiant in the sight of God as the homicide was hateful, are performed throughout the city, and not a single line in a single daily paper commemorates these beautiful deeds. Whenever country readers hear of the badness of New York let them remember that there are men and women and children, by the hundreds and thousands, doing works of charity that have no memorial except in the thought of God. Let them think of the Howard missions, the Sunday-schools, the newsboys' lodgings, the Sisters of the Stranger, and various other sisterhoods ; the Guild of St. John and various other brotherhoods ; the Young Men's Christian Association and various other benevolent societies of men ; of St. Luke's and the various other hospitals. Why, I have some knowledge of twenty-three societies to relieve the poor, seventeen to help children, eleven asylums for the aged, three for women, three for the blind, three for deaf mutes, two for FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 47 1 lunatics, one for inebriates, and one for soldiers, besides fifty-two other benevolent societies, sustained by Israelites and Christians, not counting Bible societies, evangelical alliances, tract societies, temperance societies, Sunday-school societies, young men's and young women's Christian associations, city missions, education societies, dispensaries, homes, hospitals, and industrial schools, and not including orphan asylums, training schools for Christian workers, and the great parent societies of the several Churches. When you call this city " Bad New York " recollect these, and the many thousands of individual charities daily dispensed. I know men who, through me, " do good by stealth and blush to find it fame." All this is in " Bad New York." STREET-BEGGING. " Ye have the poor always with you," said the great Teacher. There never has been a time, in any nation, when this was not true. Is it likely that anywhere, at anytime, it will not be true? Even a superficial view of society will show that there are those who are really poor without blame. There are those who, for causes for which they are not responsible, and which they would gladly re- move if they could, are not able, by any exertion in their power to make, to procure what is really needed. No political economy has been able to remove this social element, no religious culture has been able to eliminate it. It would seem as if the saying of the great Teacher, with which this article opened, not only stated a fact, but also announced a general law of human society. But there are the " poor " and the " paupers." All paupers may be poor, but all poor are not paupers. There are those among the poor who areas gifted, as learned, as refined, as noble, as self-respect- ing, and as respectable as their richest fellow-citizens. A rich man may be rich because he is honorable, and a poor man may be poor because he is honorable. It shows a lack of knowledge, either of human society or of the English tongue, to say of any one that " he is poor, but honest." But paupers are ordinarily poor people whose poverty is due to themselves, and might be avoided if they were what they ought 472 CHIPS AND CHUNKS to be, and what, therefore, they might be. The word " ordinarily M is used because it is possible to conceive cases in which certain poor fall into the class of paupers for want of a delicacy which, perhaps, it would be too much to expect of them. Almost all beggars are paupers — not all, for some occasionally beg who cannot otherwise relieve their poverty ; but probably ninety-nine of every hun- dred beggars prefer beggary to work ; to even such work as they could perform — such work as is performed by many of those very persons from whom they solicit aid. Let it be borne in mind that the worthy poor are to be helped and the unworthy are to be cured. Let it also be recollected that the worthy poor almost never beg, and that out of every thousand beggars infesting the streets and visiting the houses of cities proba- bly not more than one is a proper subject for alms. All this may sound very harsh to those good souls who say to themselves that, having the comforts of life, it would be wicked in them to refuse a dime to a brother man who is in want, and who also say that it were better to help nine unworthy than suffer one worthy to go un- helped. But is it " help " ? The gist of the question lies there. If a man prefer begging to work, and you keep him from work and at begging, are you " helping" that man? Are you not injuring that man and the whole community? Street-beggars play on the feelings of those who are kindly dis- posed, and they understand the art of approaching good people on " the blind side/' They form a fraternity, bound together by cer- tain ties of mutual helpfulness in their " business " and by certain signs which enable them to co-operate. If these men applied the same abilities with the same industry in lawful pursuits they would make a legitimate livelihood. But they will not work. Nevertheless, they base their appeals usually on the ground that they cannot get work. They find you when they believe you have no employment for them, and then — " if they could only get work ! '' They know what will pass in your mind, and that finally you will give them money because you cannot give them work and cannot bear to turn away a fellow man who is hungry and who does not seem to have the means of winning bread. But if you will make some little contrivance in your house which, while it is wholly unproductive, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 473 seems to have the semblance of work, and offer these men pay, you will soon discover the real state of the case. A number of examples of this kind are known, but only two will be given, and the reader may be sure that they are perfectly au- thentic. A gentleman of high character and great generosity, who has a large manufacturing establishment in the city of New York, conducted his business where it was very easy of access to beggars. They so interfered with his work and wrought upon his feelings that he had recourse to the test of giving the applicants apparent employment. On the floor on which was his counting-room he had a pump erected in full view of his desk. He did not need the pump. The water which was drawn ran off unused ; but still it was some work to draw the water. As each beggar came and was told he should work for his living his pathetic reply was to the effect of " O, if I could only find work ! " The pump was immediately proffered, and pay at a rate which would procure a night's lodging for an hour's work. He was told that he could have that work every day until he found other employment. The suffering appli- cant was much obliged, but in one case he had a lame hand, and in another he had a friend at the door whom he must dismiss, so that he should not be kept waiting during the hour ; but it seemed to take all the rest of the day to dismiss the " friend," as the applicant never came back. In other cases there were other excuses, and the up- shot of the experiment was that, while a few accepted an hour's work at good pay, there was only one man who returned the second morning, and he never came back again. " The Sisters of the Stranger " is an organization of ladies con- nected with the " Church of the Strangers " in New York. They do not so much furnish money as look after strangers, giving advice, helping in emergencies, protecting strangers from imposition, etc. But they do both give and lend money, as in their judgment is best. Some months ago the lady in charge had much writing on hand for the church, for the " Sisters of the Stranger," and for the " American Institute of Christian Philosophy," whose summer-school was ap- proaching, and whose secretary she was helping. There came in an able-bodied man, who seemed to have some culture ; but, according to his account, he could not find work enough to procure him a 4;4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS meal. The lady asked him to write his name. It was well done. She then proposed to give him good pay for making a number of copies of a circular then in hand. He sat down to his work, not very graciously, and, after having worked about twenty minutes, doing about half the lady did in the same time, he received ample remuneration, but said, as he handed the papers to the lady : "Well, this is too humiliating! I'll never ask for help again." Yet the next morning the lady had occasion to visit her pastor, and found that same man at the door. He had come to beg food. By all means now known, and to be hereafter discovered, this class of men must be taught that it is not true that the world owes them a living, as they are so fond of repeating, but that it is true that every man owes the world work, and that if he will not pay this just debt he is a scoundrel, and, so far from being an object of commiseration, is a subject for punishment. This evil is so great that all good men and women should unite to make every practi- cable exertion for its cure. In this article a few suggestions are made, some of which may be adopted by each reader : i. Let the teaching in all our schools and churches go to the root of the matter. Every human being should be taught that he is born debtor, not creditor, to humanity; that in entering upon life he enters upon the enjoyment of a great estate laid up by fore- gone generations ; that he is under a debt which can be paid only to the generations which succeed him, and that this can be done only by doing all he can for the generation in which he exists. It must be shown that the possession of great wealth excuses no one. The sons of the rich should feel their responsibility. The " gilded youth " of the avenue, the daintily-dressed young fellows who go months without a day of mental or manual labor, should be made to feel that they are the frilled " tramps " at one end of society, and no more to be respected by thoughtful men than the shirtless " tramps " at the other end. Indeed, it will be well to stir the con- sciences of the men who spend whole days in utter idleness, or sauntering, or gazing vacantly from the windows of our fashionable club-houses, by agitating among them the question how far they are responsible for the street-beggars who are often asking them- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 475 selves the question why they should not be fed without work, seeing that their genteel brothers do not work and yet fare sumptuously. 2. Let each resident of a city make himself acquainted with the societies already existing for the relief of the necessities of various classes, arid as each applicant comes let him be sent to the institu- tion provided for his case. The resident of New York, for instance, should examine the City Registry for " Asylums and Homes," and for " Societies," Trow's City Directory. There are columns of names of organized and operative societies, covering almost all conceivable cases of need and of suffering. If the applicant will not be helped by any of these then he proclaims his unfitness for private beneficence. 3. Let each citizen select some society which has an arrangement for visiting and examining cases. To that special society let him send those who apply to him, stating frankly that he does not give pecuniary aid to any who are not known to him. The result will be that those who are willing to have their cases examined will apply to the society designated, and those who ought not to receive money aid will not apply ; and, more than that, they will commu- nicate to their whole tribe such information as will keep them from making application ; and, still more, the society will be aided in car- rying forward its work of practical and judicious beneficence. This can be done by having in your pocket a card with the name of the society upon it, and then when you are accosted on the street you need lose no time ; you simply tell the applicant to carry that card to the place designated, and all will be right. Probably, in a majority of cases, the card will be thrown away. But let it be remarked that any man of means who regularly sends his applicants for help to a society to whose treasury he has not contributed is on a moral level with the man who habitually draws checks upon a bank in which he has no deposits. 4. Every good citizen should give some time to the attentive con- sideration of the poor who come under his own immediate observa- tion. This he owes to himself. A rich man may set apart thou- sands of dollars annually to the maintenance of a corps of judicious and faithful investigators, who should distribute wisely to the poor 4/6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS tens of thousands of dollars of his wealth, and yet, if he do not put himself in brotherly communication with some poor man, deserving or undeserving, and strive by friendly advice and help to lift him to a self-supporting plane, he will lose all that blessedness which is promised to him that " considereth " the poor (Psa. xli, i), and that reward which comes to him that "pitieth " the poor (Prov. xix, 17). It is to be observed that the word in the first of these passages means to act wisely toward the poor, and the word in the second means to behave graciously toward the poor, neither of which is complied with by mere money gifts ; nor can any man, by pecuniary gifts, purchase exemption from the duty indicated in these words. Moreover, it will be instructive to follow up the people who appeal to you on the street or come to your house for cold victuals. Not long ago a woman was in the work-house, leaving her two little sons outside, the younger only three and the elder only seven years of age, who were compelled by several dissipated women to collect food and money for them, the money being spent by the women for liquor. Every child-beggar should be followed up. In most cases it would be found that the circumstances of these children called for the intervention of the " Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- dren." In many cases they will not allow you to accompany them ; they are so early trained to roguery that they will escape from you while seeming to be conducting you to their houses. Strangers in the city should make it a rule never to give on the streets, however pitiable the story and moving the appeal. The great majority of all beggars on our streets are " professional." They know whether you are from New England, or the South, or the West, or from a foreign country. They will catch you just when it will seem most heartless to deny them ; for instance, late at night. 5. All good citizens should unite in seeing that wise laws are framed and promptly enforced against mendicancy, to the execution of which every man should be willing to contribute time and effort, as well as money. To every man who says, " I would work if I could get work to do," should be given the reply of a house provided, to which he should be compelled to go, and where he would find some work which he should be compelled to do. The product of the work probably would not meet the expenses of the establish- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 477 ment, but the balance could be procured by enlisting the interest of philanthropic men of means. In discussions of this complex and important subject it is always to be borne in mind that what it is desirable to vacate is not the poverty of the poor nor the correlative burden-bearing of the rich. Neither of these is intolerable. Neither of these is hurtful to the individual or to society. Pauperism is that which hurts society at large, by diminishing the general wealth and by injuring the char- acter of the individual. What must we do to eliminate that which produces pauperism ? First, we must abstain from every thing which tends to offer a premium to those who are willing to live off the toil of others ; and, second, w T e must strive to destroy that will- ingness in individual cases by moral reform. The worthy poor will always remain ; but the poor who have the greatest claim upon our regard will never beg. They will perish in silence. These must be found. We must so cultivate our spiritual and moral senses that we shall become quick to detect the needs of others and swift to relieve. That class we should have no wish to put out of human society. The unworthy poor are to be helped as well, but differently. Money is not help to them. They need moral culture. It is our duty to impart it to them ; but it is a difficult duty to perform. Most pastors in the city will probably tell you that they can more easily obtain hundreds of dollars from their prosperous parishioners to scatter among the poor than they can persuade one parishioner to give one afternoon in exerting moral influence over the vicious portion of the community. The third class, the thriftless and incompetent, are the most dif- ficult to deal with. Patient instruction is what they need. But it is so irksome for a man of robust and energetic character to tolerate those who are born inefficient. He succeeds ; why should not they? This is the question which the successful ask. He who has never had any sickness can have no conception of the burden which that man bears who has a secret malady or a perpetual invisible weak- ness ; much less can he have sympathy. As it is with the body, so is it with the character. Wherefore we are taught by the highest authority that, " we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of 4 ;8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS the weak, and not to please ourselves " (Rom. xv, i). Life will never be without its burdens, and to all classes comes the apostolic injunc- tion, " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ " (Gal. vi, 2). And " the law of Christ " is the highest law known in theoretical ethics and in practical good living. INTENTIONS. In regard to the effect of the intention upon the act, occasionally there are heard in business and in social circles utterances which seem to betray moral haziness, if not ethical darkness. It is assumed that if the intention be right the act cannot be wrong. The truth is that he who performs an act which he knows to be wrong has no right to go behind the act to his intention. Inten- tions are known to God alone; by men they are to be judged from the act. A man's assertion that his intention was good when the act is known to be wicked is of no avail. Who can tell whether he speaks the truth or not ? A man is known to have stolen some- thing. He declares his intention was good ; but a man who will steal will lie. Defense from intention is available only in neutral acts. When- ever an act may be either good or bad according to modifying cir- cumstances, then the intention of the performer may be his justifica- tion. The making of a certain chemical combination may be good or bad ; that will depend upon the intention. If the maker intends a medicine to heal a sick man the act is good. If he intends an insidious poison wherewith to take life unlawfully, it is bad. The taking of human life itself is a neutral act ; it may be done accident- ally and have no moral color ; it may be done intentionally, and then be right in one case and wrong in another. There the intention comes in, so that, unless the clause in the indictment which charges " malice aforethought " be established the indictment falls, although the taking of life be proved or even admitted. The reason for this is that life may be taken intentionally without malice and without fault, as when a criminal is executed. A man is getting himself on dangerous ground when he gives FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 479 more study to his intentions than to the morality of his acts. The latter is the first thing to be settled. " Is what I do right ? " When- ever an act is known to be wrong in itself no intentions can justify it. There are some departments in ethical action in which there is no controversy among people making any pretensions to morality. For instance, it is wrong to steal ; it is wrong to commit adultery ; it is wrong to speak falsely against another ; no intentions are to be considered in these cases whatever. For any act of the kind a man should not make defense ; he should seek forgiveness. It is in the first of these, namely, in the violation of the command- ment, " Thou shalt not steal," that business men are mainly inter- ested. Stealing consists in any use of another man's property not authorized by him. A corporation official having charge of funds which are to be expended only according to a certain provided method is a thief if he uses any portion of that money in any way without the authority of the corporation. This is true wherever there is trust made by either corporation or individuals. It is also true of the use of another's property, however a man may have acquired control of it, whether by its being intrusted or otherwise. All talk of intentions in these cases is not only illogical, but also very misleading and very demoralizing. When a man who performs such acts can be talked of as " a good fellow " then begins the dis- ruption of society by the destruction of confidence. The man who betrays trust, who misappropriates funds committed to him for a specific purpose, is worse than the man who steals a loaf of bread intending to pay for it afterward. If the treasurer of a company use for a single hour a thousand dollars, or any other amount, without direction of the owner, and put that money back at the end of the hour, and no human being knows that he " borrowed " those funds, that man is a thief. He stands in the sight of God just as he would stand in the sight of man if any mishap befell him and he could not replace the property, and so was detected. No doubt that in business circles there are thousands of such cases ; but those men ought to be made to know that they are dishonest. They have fallen into the devil's trap with many other souls. They have managed to get out without detec- tion before the trap is held up to the public so that all eyes can see 480 CHIPS AND CHUNKS those who have not been able to make their escape. It certainly is the devil's trap, because so many men go into it in the hope of com- ing- out but never make their exit. When the funds are abstracted that is a fact, a thing- done. The replacing is subject to so many contingencies that a large number of men slip and are lost. It is to be impressed upon every man's conscience that even should he replace the money he is a thief. He has stolen ; he is as much a thief as if discovered. If that were universally understood how much crime would be avoided ! There was a case of a man who stole bread, not for his own use, but to feed the hungry, and with all the benevolence he was so dull of perception as not to perceive that he was a thief. A young priest, so soon as he was satisfied that any man or woman was holy, would put that person to death by a peculiar instrument which could penetrate the heart without leaving a sign. His inten- tion was to take saints out of mortal trouble and put them in im- mortal glory. He did not perceive that he was a murderer. A Protestant clergyman in trust of church funds took a portion and used it for the purpose of assisting in the building of churches. With another portion he speculated in stocks, expecting to make so much from the stocks as to replace the church funds so that it would do all the good possible to it originally, and he could do the addi- tional good to the churches helped. He did not perceive that he was a thief. The stocks went down on his hands and a discovery was made. His father died with a broken heart. He was degraded from his ministry by his Church, not for buying and selling stocks, but for using money committed to him which he had no right for one single minute to use for any other purpose than that for which it was contributed. Since the above was written I have had a letter from the super- intendent of a Sunday-school, from which the following is an extract : " My zeal in the matter of building the church has been so over- powering that I have even been tempted in the spirit of humble trust and much prayer to do that which is (considered) wrong, that I might thereby do good, to wit : I took $500 and consecrated it to the Lord, and asked him to direct the wheels of fortune, as might be for the best in its investment in the Louisiana State Lottery. I FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 481 asked that if it could be consistent with God's will I might draw enough to build the church. I lost the $500, and believe that the Lord so directed." This man who gambles for religion can dare to ask God's blessing on an act so nefarious that if known to his Church he would be de- prived of his office. Why not plan to rob a bank and ask God to pardon the burglary? And with such morality this man is set to lead a Sunday-school ! ANONYMOUS LETTERS. It seems impossible for a right-minded man to conceive of any circumstances which can justify the writing of an anonymous letter. Any communication is intended to give pleasure or pain or mere information. Under any circumstances can a manly person of even semi-average intelligence be brought to write such a letter without signing his name to it? If he means to give pleasure he must know that any pleasant feeling the kind words may excite in the heart of the recipient will be alloyed by at least a curiosity to know who feels so kindly toward him. If it is intended to give pain it is a most cowardly thing. A man who would write such a letter is at heart an assassin. It is absurd to attempt to convey information in this way. No man of sense will act upon a statement made without an authorita- tive name. How does he know but that it may be a trap? He knows that the writer is a sneak even if he be friendly. A man who receives information that is of any importance desires to ascertain from his informant how he came to know it ; and then the recipient of the information takes it in with many another thing he knows, and that starts a series of questions, the answers to which might be given by his informant and be actually more valuable than the in- formation originally conveyed. It is not wise to attempt to correct an error by an anonymous letter. Perhaps it is not an error. Perhaps if you were face to face with the person you are attempting to correct you would find that you, yourself, are laboring under a misapprehension. 482 CHIPS AND CHUNKS We are told that ministers very often receive such letters, lectur- ing them roundly for having said things they never uttered. Some reporter's misapprehension, some printer's omission of the word " not " from a, sentence, makes some person feel that he must take the minister to task and lecture him. What an absurdity this is ! No man will write an anonymous letter who is not devoid either of intelligence or honor. It is just such senseless individuals who un- dertake, in anonymous letters, to lecture decent men. Now no man who has sense and self-respect pays any regard to such com- munications. It is not in their behalf this editorial is written. But these lines may fall into the hands of some young person who has never considered the question, and as we have been requested to set forth our view of the ethics in the case we have done so. A recent painful suicide of a woman within two blocks of our dwelling, a catastrophe brought on by malicious anonymous letters, gives some energy to our expressions. We have been shown several such letters. We recall one that was addressed to a clergyman, rating him soundly for something he had been reported in the newspaper to have said, which the good man had never spoken. He was lectured as if he were an arrant hypocrite, although for years he has been one of the most laborious of our most distinguished American clergymen. Newark, New Jersey, has the affliction of having such a mis- creant as one of its inhabitants, and the thorough-paced hypocrite signed himself, " One who feels his responsibilities." It was laugha- ble to see such a signature put to a letter which the writer dared not own to his fellow-men. We once saw another addressed to a clergyman, in which he was advised to pay his debts, with a kind of threat of some exposure if he did not. The good man had been keeping house in this city for years; was accustomed to pay all his bills monthly, and stated that at that time he owed simply ten dollars beyond his current butcher's and baker's bills, and nothing was due until the end of the month, so closely had he paid up his debts, as he is in pecuniary circumstances which make him much easier than most of his brethren. This letter was signed, " A member of your church." That was true or false. If false, the writer was simply, to speak good Saxon, a liar. If true, a hypocrite. For how could FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 483 he pretend to be friendly with his pastor and at the same time write him a letter like that ? Of course in none of these cases did the recipient feel the least annoyance, or else the letters would not be shown as proof of the absurdity of anonymous letter-writing. The writer has seldom received an anonymous communication which was not complimentary ; yet he prays that no one may be tempted to write him an anonymous letter thanking him for the sound sense of this article ! PERPETUATED FELONY. JOHN HARTMAN'S STORY. My dear reader, if at any time you have thought of committing suicide I beg you to read the story of my friend, John Hartman, before you quite perform the irremediable act. To those who have never been even near desperation it may be interesting. This is John's story: We were talking about the burdens, the besetments, and the re- sponsibilities of life, when John said, " Do you recollect in what a bad state I was two years ago? " I did recolleet. " Well," said he, " my state of mind was such that I was on the point of committing suicide, and should have done so but for you." " Well," said I, " I did not know that you loved me enough to stay in a world of intolerable sorrow for my sake." " O, that isn't it," said John, " because you know that I love Maria and her boy and my father and mother a good deal more than I love you ; but it was something you wrote which led to a train of thoughts that stopped me from being a suicide. All life seemed dark to me. Every thing had gone wrong. My wife, Maria, was apparently a helpless invalid. My little boy was a cripple. I was a burden to my father and mother. My business had miscarried. I thought I had behaved honestly, but while being turned upon the world penniless a phase of one business transaction could scarcely be explained to my honor, and I was virtually driven from 4$4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS my club. My church did not exercise discipline upon me, but plainly I was shunned by the brethren. It seemed as if I beggared and disgraced every body that I touched. Any movement to im- prove my condition seemed to pull some heavier burden upon me. My health was failing, and somehow I worked myself up to the idea that the merciful God would pity a poor wretch who took himself out of so miserable a world. I had worked myself up to the point of having selected a razor which was to sever the jugular vein and cut me loose from the bonds of life. I had arranged every thing in a bath-room, to give as little trouble as possible with my remains. Somehow, at that very moment, I picked up a piece of a newspaper in which there was an article by you, and I concluded to glance over it as the last act of my life and a tribute of my friendship for you. It happened to treat on what a man owes his survivors. It showed that they were to be considered, and that a man's life should be such that when he died that life should not entail unnecessary troubles upon those who loved him. From that point I started on. It was a new idea to me. It never occurred to me that a dead man would owe, even after death, any thing to the living. I knew that the living owed duties to the dead ; but this was the other side of the question. When one has a friend dead he suffers a bereave- ment which that friend could not prevent, but when that friend has committed suicide there is an indefinable drop of gall and wormwood infused into the cup of bitterness, and that the sui- cide could have prevented as well as not. While a man lives, in whatever narrowness of environment, under whatever pressure of trouble, so long as he does his whole duty and struggles day by day to keep up, he is, at least, affording those about him an example of heroism which may go far toward redeeming him in their eyes from the effect of many a fault. He is at least a swimmer striving to keep himself up, not for his own sake, but for the sake of others. He has been caught by the freshet ; he has not jumped into the pool. u Then another thought came to me," he added ; " whatever mistakes a man makes, injurious or painful to those whom he loves, he may in the course of time repair the damage he has done, but the distress he has brought on others by his suicide is, by the very FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 485 act itself, rendered irremediable. However sorry he may be in the land of the shades he can never repair the injury which he has done. That seemed to me dreadful, and suicide rose before me as a perpetuated felony toward those who could never find relief therefrom. Naturally that set the crime before me in the light of cowardice. There is nothing high, nothing brave in destroying one's own life. A murderer may be moved by passion ; it is pos- sible to kill a man under circumstances which make the act heroic, but a suicide is always mean, despicable, and cowardly. It is his fierce egotism that makes him forgetful of the sufferings of all others and eager only to obtain relief for himself. The very moment that view came clear before my eyes I abandoned all thought of suicide. I said to myself, ' I shall reach a point where my troubles will break my heart or brains and so give me release, or I shall mend my affairs, or, in the shifting of human affairs, they will mend them- selves ; but if I am to live to be a hundred years old, and in the depth of poverty and trouble all that while, I will stand it ; and I will employ the time in endeavoring to repair all the wrongs that I have done. I will not, by one irreparable act, leave to others a burden of trouble from which no power in heaven or earth can relieve them so long as they live.' So instead of severing my jugular vein that morning I shaved myself and went to work. My nearness to de- struction seemed to act as a tonic, and from that time forth the brave way in which I have walked into the clouds has dissipated them, and life is becoming not only more and more tolerable, but really more and more comfortable." ONE'S SURVIVORS. [The following is the article referred to in John Hartman's story.] The man who takes a proper view of his moral obligations feels that he owes something to those friends who may survive him. A partial admission of this is made by every man who insures his life. But the conviction need to be made more intensive as well as more extensive. It is a meanly selfish thing to care for nothing that may happen when we are dead. One says, " What do I care ; I shall know noth- 31 4 86 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ing about it ! " Very true, but some one will ; some one to whom you are under obligation, perhaps some one who loved you, certainly some one who is somehow to be affected by your departure from human society. Some one has at least to be at the trouble of bury- ing any sort of a man who may die, even the most worthless. A proper sentiment on this subject would perhaps prevent every form of suicide. Men have been known to take their own lives with most scrupulous care that survivors should have as little trouble as possible in disposing of their remains and closing up their affairs, but the act itself has left a heritage of shame, or other distress, to all who bore them any relationship. It is more criminal to inflict pain on our survivors than on those with whom we live, because, whether done by design or negligence, it adds cowardice to the other elements of evil. In this case the wrong-doer increases the burden to be borne at the very moment that he withdraws his por- tion of the support. Our departure amid the most favorable circumstances, of comfort and ripened life and accomplished work and ample provision for surviving relatives, must give the unavoidable pain of bereavement. We are morally bound to live and die so that, as far as in us lies, no unnecessary pain be added to hearts that love us and are wounded. Care for our reputation, preservation of all our alliances in an un- tangled condition, thorough fulfillment of our obligations of relation- ship up to the last day of life, preparation of complete explanation of every thing which might raise a question in our affairs, these things we owe our survivors as certainly as we owe them truth and honorable dealing while we are with them. Beyond that we are bound to live so that our surviving Christian friends shall not have distressing doubt as to our spiritual salvation. Death vacates no moral obligations, but it may put it out of our power to repair the wrong we may inflict in dying. BLESSED ST. IGNORANCE. Good Thomas a Kempis, whose Imitation of Christ has given con- viction and strength and encouragement to many a soul, once wrote: " My son, in many things it is thy duty to be ignorant." FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 487 We live in an age in which all classes of men unite in chorus of praise to knowledge. There have in the late centuries been such rapid acquisition of knowledge and such application of knowledge to the amassing of wealth that every body is ready to say a good word for knowledge. My Lord Bacon wrote, " Knowledge is power." The saying has not only been the theme of many a collegian's ora- tion, but also the secret of much close application to intellectual pur- suits. The desire for power is innate in man, because he is a child of God. It is said that " any fool can get rich ; " but a very slight inspection of society will show the ambitious young man that wealth is the door to power, and that knowledge is the key to that locked door. Wherefore he studies mineralogy, geology, and chemistry, that he may open the door, and go in to the power. Those who appre- ciate knowledge for its own sake are exceeding few. Now, it is not true that all knowledge is power ; it is true — what a wiser than Bacon said — " He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." It is a mistake to suppose that what the world needs is culture, and that learning will necessarily produce goodness ; that intelligence will insure morality and culture create holiness. But a craze seems to be upon our people for knowledge ; so much so that they are like a child who, in the study of a scientist, fills his little apron as full as he can hold it of prisms and microscopes and stere- oscopes and crucibles and retorts, and goes out thinking himself rich, while the little fellow has not the faintest idea of any use which any human being can make of any one of these instruments. That is the reason why in this day there are so many learned fools. Is there no one to say a kind w T ord for ignorance ? I really fear that I should not have the courage to do so but for the most excel- lent words of Thomas a Kempis. Emboldened by them, I stand amid the derision of the cultivated classes and fold my hands and devoutly say, " Blessed be Saint Ignorance ! " I would also use that prayer which is in The Imitation, " Da mihi, Domine, sci?'e quod sciendum est" in the sense of Matthew Arnold's translation, " Grant that the knowledge I get may be the knowledge worth having." It is not the duty of any man to know every thing, for the reason that no man can know every thing. Therefore he must make selec- tion of the things which he can know and which he believes he 488 CHIPS AND CHUNKS should know ; and in this work he is bound to employ his best judg- ment. On the other hand, there are things of which he should re- main in perfect ignorance, if possible ; that is to say, should keep himself from being in any position in which he is likely to learn them. 1. It is better not to know useless things, because it is injurious to have the mind filled with the knowledge of mere facts of which no use can be made in the cultivation of the intellect, in the improve- ment of the morals, or in the enlargement of the life. There are peo- ple who would feel that they were greatly wronged if they could not know every latest thing that had occurred. Many such people can- not afford seven dollars a year for a daily paper, and yet they feel as if they must know every thing that has happened in all the world in the preceding twenty-four hours. They must know who fell down stairs ; who mashed his thumb ; whose ox fell into the ditch ; who broke into a distant bank ; what lewd woman has arrived from Eu- rope ; who ran away with whose wife and who found it out, and how he came to tell it, and where she is now, and what her husband is going to do about it, and how many wives the fellow had who took her off. The daily newspapers, it may be said very conservatively, are four fifths filled with things that nine tenths of the human beings in this country have no need of ever knowing in this world, and will probably never have any need of knowing in any world that is to come. Probably only one tenth of all the people in the city of New York who read this morning's papers learned two things worth their ever knowing. This statement may be supposed to exclude all spec- ulators in stocks, in oil, and in grain ; they do want the quotations. There would be no harm in all this acquisition of useless knowl- edge if it did not occupy the time and exhaust the strength which might be employed in gaining knowledge which would be really useful. 2. Then, again, it is a most excellent thing to be ignorant of what- ever corrupts the imagination or in any shape weakens the moral principle. Now, very much in our literature — using that word to imply what is printed above the plane of ephemeral publications — falls into this category. In drama, in novels, in historical composi- tion, in philosophical treatises, nay, even in sermons, we sometimes FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 489 find .that which is absolutely injurious. What do we mean by inju- rious? That is injurious to me which makes it more difficult for me to obey all the commandments of the heavenly Father; in other words, to be good. All knowledge is to be considered as an end to goodness ; and if there be any knowledge which does not make a man better that knowledge is either injurious or useless. 3. It is a good thing to be ignorant of any thing which may suggest to me a captivating method of doing wrong. It is best not to have the acquaintance of the devil when he comes as an angel of light. For this reason so many of the publications of the day are such as no human being ought to read or to see. They suggest new crimes or new methods of committing old crimes. All sins against chastity, property, and life are increased in the number of their commissions by publications detailing the modes in which these crimes have been committed. Tell a child or a man of a new way to commit a sin, and it will burrow in his imagination and influence his life, and most probably, in a moment of weakness and temptation, cause his moral ruin. I have the confession of an eminent clergyman, made years ago, and, if he is to be believed, never communicated to another human being, to the effect that he once heard from a man of great learning the description of a certain form of vice of the existence of which in human society he never before had had the slightest intimation. At first it was a shocking revelation to him ; but it wrought on him until he became familiarized with the idea. He fell under environ- ment of temptation, and found himself able to resist ; the second time the temptation to commit sin in that particular form occurred to him his strength had left and he fell, and had years of bitter re- pentance, relieving his soul in confession and prayer. Now, I cannot believe that his learned friend who made the statement to him in- tended to corrupt his moral nature ; he never dreamed of such a thing. He never would have told it to a child or even to a young person. But how much better it would have been for that Christian man to have gone to his grave ignorant of the possibility of that form of sin ! It seems that men ought to be very careful of their line of culture ; and men ought to be very careful of their communications to their 490 CHIPS AND CHUNKS fellow-men. Saint Ignorance knows many a thing because so igno- rant of many another thing. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ; and there is no enlargement which can fail to be inju- rious if it do not increase in a man his reverence for the things which are high, invisible, and enduring. One great American humorist, who also was a very great philosopher, has said : " It is better to be igno- rant than to know so many things that are not so." Wherefore again I say, ''Blessed be St. Ignorance." UNPRAISED HELPERS. There are many people in the world who are doing much good, and who are both unnoticed by the world and unconscious to themselves. They often stand in close relation to very active, conspicuous, and useful people, with whom their humble souls contrast themselves to their own increase of despondency. For instance, here is a woman, without any genius, who has a brill- iant husband, a man distinguished in the councils of the nation, or on the lecture-forum, or in the pulpit, or at the bar ; or a man perpet- ually increasing the area of known truth by his investigations, and enlarging the field of human intelligence by his publications. The good woman compares herself to this brilliant husband, and says, " Alas ! I am doing nothing. What a sensation his last book made ! It has gone far and wide ; in many a household it is read for comfort or instruction, but I have never written a line which can be of benefit to any human being, unless it may have been in some of my poor letters." And so she depreciates herself and grows sad. In a church a humble layman may look up at the pulpit and see his pastor as on a throne of power when he is using the word of God authoritatively and is evidently swaying multitudes into paths of righteousness. The layman says to himself, '* I can scarcely lead my family in prayer, so broken is my thought and so lame is my language. I very seldom have the courage to say a word in our prayer-meetings. I seem to have no talent in the world but the talent of money-making. I can work down in my counting-house, and turn over and over dollar on dollar and get richer and richer ; FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 49 1 but what is that compared with being rich in the souls one has brought to God in Christ Jesus ?" And so he becomes discouraged. But let these good people look on the other side. First take the case of the wife. Why is her husband so success- ful a man? Simply because he has not a particle of domestic care. His wife has raised his children so that not one of them has ever given him a pang. They are ensamples to the whole flock. He can say to his people, " Follow my children as they follow Christ." Every thing is at peace at home. This could not have come to pass if the good wife had not assiduously employed her practical common sense in looking after the domestic matters. Now, let her remember that while she was cheapening groceries, patching little trousers, darning her husband's stockings, mending here, saving there, smooth- ing yonder, often when her OAvn heart was tired and her hands weary, she was in all these things clearing the field for the exercise of her husband's great ability. He could not have had half the pow r er he wields nor half the field he occupies but for that good wife's good management. Half the glory of the crown which the Lord will give at the close of this ministry will belong to that good woman. She has done her part as faithfully as the husband has done his, and the Lord is not unmindful, to forget her labor of love. In the other case let the layman recollect that, as times are now, in the present organization of society, churches cannot be main- tained without money. Land must be bought and materials pro- cured for the erection of ecclesiastical edifices ; repairs must be made ; constant attendance is required ; and there must be some one who can furnish the pecuniary supplies. The pastor wants some members of his congregation who have great financial ability, and whose engagements allow them to do something for the Church. He must never have financial cares ; he must never have to think how his own support is to come, how a church debt is to be paid, how money is to be raised for repairs. It is a vicious system which rolls any of this work upon the heart of the pastor. Every man that takes any portion off leaves the soul of his pastor more alert, his intellect more elastic, his heart more ardent for the special work of edifying the saints and of calling sinners to repentance. There is many a blessed pastor this day who has a good time 492 CHIPS AND CHUNKS preaching the Gospel, and who may not himself know to what plain man of plodding, practical intellect he owes arrangements which make the financial affairs of his church run so smoothly as to relieve him of all care. But when the crowns come to be distributed then the Lord will remember the layman that had uncircumcised lips, like Moses, and not forget his labor of love in that he labored for the saints. Let us not be betrayed into misjudgments or despondencies by the appearance of things ; our main audience is behind the scenes. Where there is one seeing us on earth there are multitudes looking at us out of eternity. Little fames on earth are small indeed, but the glory of eternity is enduring. MEEKNESS. Meekness is not weakness. A man may be weak and meek, but he is not meek because he is weak. Rather, meekness implies strength ; some strength of passion. No being without passion can be meek. Meekness, therefore, is not apathy, since it demands feeling. Meekness is not stoicism, is not self-control ; which comes from the culture of the mind, and is pro- duced by mingling with gentle society. No man is naturally meek. Some people are born servile. They are Uriah Heeps from their birth. Some are born humble, some soft, some weak, some lymphatic. No man was ever born meek. The natural characteristic which most resembles meekness, which a man may have from his birth, is despicable ; and when he acquires it by practice it is villainous. St. Paul teaches, in Galatians v, that " meekness is the fruit of the Spirit." It is a purely Christian virtue. The heathen neither had it nor taught it. Roman virtue was precisely the opposite of meekness. He was the most virtuous man who used his powers of body and mind to punish his enemy. The meek man is a man out of whom pride, unforgiveness and hatred have been taken by the Spirit of God. He knows his rights ; he maintains them quietly. He feels through all his soul an injury FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 493 done him, but never seeks redress by vengeance. That which by nature is despicable in man is absolutely sublime when superinduced upon his character by the Holy Spirit. He abstains from injuring his enemy, not because he does not feel the injury done him- self, nor because he has not power or skill to take vengeance, nor because it is politic to suffer wrong for a season, but because it is pleasing to his heavenly Father that he should overcome evil with good. Our highest example of consummate meekness is in our Lord Christ. The greatest possible injury was done to him, such as no other man ever endured. He thrilled to the core of his soul on being spit upon. Then did Jesus, being more insulted than any other man could be, having far more might and power over his enemies than ever any other man did have, bear all his wrongs as quietly as if he had no ability to take vengeance. Cowards and weaklings can never be meek, but strong, positive, passionate natures come to their utmost grandeur when they endure temporary wrong to themselves for the sake of eternal right to the universe. THE USES OF AN ENEMY. Always keep an enemy on hand ; a brisk, hearty, active enemy. Remark the uses of an enemy : 1. The having one is proof that you are somebody. Wishy-washy, empty, worthless people never have enemies. Men who never move never run against any thing ; and when a man is thoroughly dead and utterly buried nothing ever runs against him. To be run against is proof of existence and position ; to run against something is proof of motion. 2. An enemy is, to say the least, not partial to you. He will not flatter. He will not exaggerate your virtues. It is very probable that he will slightly magnify your faults. The benefit of that is two- fold ; it permits you to know that you have faults, and are, therefore, not a monster, and it makes them of such size as to be visible and manageable. Of course, if you have a fault you desire to know it ; when you become aware that you have a fault you desire to correct it. Your enemy does for you this valuable work which your friend cannot perform. 494 CHIPS AND CHUNKS 3. In addition, your enemy keeps you wide awake. He does not let you sleep at your post. There are two that always keep watch, namely, the lover and the hater. Your lover watches that you may sleep. He keeps off noises, excludes light, adjusts surroundings, that nothing may disturb you. Your hater watches that you may not sleep. He stirs you up when you are napping. He keeps your faculties on the alert. Even when he does nothing he will have put you in such a state of mind that you cannot tell what he will do next ; and this mental qui vive must be worth something. 4. He is a detective among your friends. You need to know who are your friends and who are not, and who are your enemies. The last of these three will discriminate the other two. When your enemy goes to one who is neither friend nor enemy and assails you the indifferent one will have nothing to say, or else will chime in, not because he is your enemy, but because it is so much easier to assent than to oppose, and especially than to refute. But your friend will take up cudgels for you on the instant. He will deny every thing and insist on proof, and proving is very hard work. There is not a truthful man in the world that could afford to undertake to prove one tenth of all his assertions. Your friend will call your enemy to the proof, and if the indifferent person through careless- ness repeats the assertion of your enemy he is soon made to feel the inconvenience thereof by the zeal your friend manifests. Fol- low your enemy around, and you will find your friends, for he will have developed them so that they cannot be mistaken. The next best thing to having a hundred real friends is to have one open enemy. DISENGAGING THE CARRIAGE. The other day I heard a story which, it seems to me, can be turned to use in some directions. In England they still keep up the atrocious railway system of putting omnibuses side by side, instead of having cars through which conductors can pass, where the publicity saves one from many an annoyance. Horrible things have been done in these car- riges, and sometimes funny things — I know one so funny that I FOR EVERY FIRESIDE, 495 dare not publish it. Intermediate between the tragedy and the comedy, the short story now told has a neutral tint. An Englishman entered one of these compartments with his great mastiff dog. The dog assumed a posture of repose and his master adjusted himself comfortably in his seat and took out his book to read. Just before the train started a guard looked in at the win- dow and quietly remarked that the dog could not be allowed to sit in the carriage, but must be taken to the baggage-van. " Certainly," said the passenger, with very gentle tone, " take him by all means." Now, the guard was a very dutiful fellow, but probably had a wife and perhaps a child, and, it may be, several other objections to affording himself as a breakfast to the powerful brute in the car- riage ; so he shut the door and passed on, hoping that the passen- ger's reflection would bring him to reason and lead him to take his dog to its rightful place. At the next station the guard, in passing, stopped at this carriage and made the same remark to the gentle- man, that the dog must be carried to the baggage-van. " O, certainly," blandly said the passenger; " I have not the least objection ; take him." The guard, as aforetime, shut the door and passed on. The gentleman resumed his reading. The novel was fascinating, and he read a number of pages. At last it occurred to him that the stop at the station was unusually long. After a little while he hailed a guard upon the platform and said to him : " When does the train start ? " " O, sir," said the guard, " your train has gone." u Gone ! " said he. " Why, how is it that I am here ? " " You were told the rules of the company, sir. You did not choose to comply, so the order was given to disengage this carriage." The guard passed on. The gentleman sat in his seat in quiet with his dog, a much wiser man, and he had gained all this addi- tional wisdom without the shedding of one single drop of blood or the utterance of one single angry word. I have pondered this narrative no little. Having been many years engaged in striving to rectify society generally, and particu- larly in trying to get every man and every dog in his rightful place, I have more than once tackled the mastiff; and I am compelled in 496 CHIPS AND CHUNKS truthfulness to say that, to the best of my recollection, in every in- stance the mastiff had the better of it. On other occasions I have been weak enough to quarrel with the master, to berate him for not taking the trouble to observe the rules of the road and put his dog in the baggage-van. Now, I have observed that quarreling is not among my most shining natural or acquired talents ; I have seen several dozen, not to say a few hundred, of men who could out- quarrel me every day in the year, including Sunday. My philosophy and my manners have been put to shame by the cool and quiet railway-guard. His seems to be the very plan to put the misery where it belongs. Now, many times, no gratifica- tion could be given to a mastiff greater than for a man of moderate build to attempt to drag him from a railway-car. It is a gratuitous presentation to him of that for which he has been long pining, and which he probably has not for several weeks been able to find a fair reason to embrace. Moreover, there is many a master to whom it would be no small gratification to see you attempt to remove his big brute from the car. In that effort, therefore, no one is hurt but yourself. If you quarrel with the master you may excite him so that he will set his dog on you, and, being well acquainted with his dog, having modes of communication which could not be sub- stantiated in a court-house, he may do so with perfect immunity. Nay, more ; it is exceedingly difficult to put a fellow-man in hot water without becoming at least somewhat heated yourself, either in preparing said hot water or in plunging your opponent thereinto. Therefore, I leave it to every calm, intelligent reader, whether the best plan after all is not to disengage the car. One can sit for long minutes enjoying great delight in contemplating the emotions which possessed the soul of the guard in this story as he walked past the carriage after it had been disengaged, and heard the anxious inquiry of the occupant. There cannot be the least doubt that he went by on purpose to receive the question ; and the delight of his spirit when he could coolly tell the passenger, " O, your train is gone, sir," is something delicious to contemplate. You see, instead of putting the ugly passenger into hot water, or before even going to the trouble to follow the gospel plan of heaping coals of fire upon his head, you go through that peculiar process which makes a FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 497 man boil internally by means of having an external freezing mixture applied to him. For all moral purposes it is invariably better to have any man reach wise conclusions from within rather than from without. The latter he resists, and, wherever he can, he will break through ; but the former seems a part of himself. I told the above story at our breakfast-table this morning, and my little granddaughter, after a pause in the merriment which suc- ceeded — a merriment in which she did not join — looked up at me and said very seriously: " Gramps, did the gentleman go on in the next train? " Here I switch off to say that I took that occasion to instruct the child on the proper method of listening to a narrative ; it spoils the effect decidedly to ask questions afterward. It is to be supposed that the artist has put in the picture all that he wants put in, and to ask him what is behind that chair or under that sofa is certainly not the correct thing in art. I had told my story so as to leave my audience with just two figures in their minds — the cool, triumphant guard on the platform, and the boiling, discomfited pas- senger in the carriage. Since leaving the breakfast-table, however, it is due to the child to say that I have taken up her suggestion, and have been following that passenger in my mind. Without positive knowledge of any subsequent facts a priori I can say this : that when he traveled, after that trip, he either left his dog at home or took him to the baggage- van before he secured his own seat. I propose to carry the moral of this story into my own life, and not hereafter either tackle the mastiff or provoke the master ; but just quietly to disengage the car. I give all people of my acquaint- ance due notice that if any thing shall hereafter come up in my re- lations with them in which there shall be presented to me the con- ditions of having to pull the mastiff from the carriage or spend a half-hour in an aggravating quarrel with his mastiff's master, or dis- engage the car, I shall in all cases invariably adopt the last of the three modes ; I shall go on with the train, however, and not stay back to see how the master and his dog are enjoying themselves in their undisturbed quiet. 498 CHIPS AND CHUNKS LETTING OFF STEAM. The work and worry of the world produce in us all, at times, a nervous condition which is very much like the generation of pent-up steam. The steam must have a vent, either upon machinery which it can operate or out into the open air. The steam must get out some way, or a little more heat will give it such elasticity as shall make it burst the boiler. It may be laid down as a rule, to which there can be the fewest possible exceptions, that it is better to waste the steam than burst the boiler. The world is so provoking, the people you help are so ungrateful, the demands upon you are so unreasonable, and sometimes so exas- perating, that you don't know what to do. You are a Christian man, and cannot rage around generally. Many is the time when it would be a most relieving thing for you to M curse Jacob and defy Israel ; " or curse any body and defy every body else. But one moment's loss of your self-control might hurl you from a position of influence which you would find it exceedingly difficult to regain. It does not do to be writing fiery letters and sending them to cor- respondents or contributing them to the press. They cannot be re- called. They remain against you. Two days after you have mailed your letter to your correspondent five hundred miles away, in which letter you shake your fist in his face and tell him "he is another," you are as cool as a cucumber, and sit in your room covered with the garments of humiliation. If you only had that letter back, how calm, how dignified, how self-respectful would be your reply! But alas ! it has gone out of your hands, never to return but to shame you. How is a man to obey that injunction of the apostle, " Be ye an- gry and sin not ? " We think we have discovered a method, from having considered the likeness which this rapid generation of heat in the human being bears to the generation of steam in the engine. The steam must drive something, or burst something, or get out somewhere in open space. This last is the thing to do when you have more than is necessary to drive your engine ; let off the surplus steam where it touches nothing and can hurt neither you nor any FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 499 one else. How would it do for each man to have his little cursery, and when he gets mad go into that apartment so arranged that no human being can hear him ? The Lord would hear him, but then the Lord has more charity than men. You may trust yourself with a crime to God sooner than you can trust yourself with a peccadillo to your fellow-man. If you growl or rage, or even — O, dreadful thought ! — curse and swear, there will be no one to hear it but your heavenly Father and yourself. He knows your frame. He remem- bers that you are dust. You will soon become ashamed of yourself, and when in that little apartment you have heaped articulate male- dictions upon your enemy — maledictions which cannot hurt him — you will probably close your visit to your cursery by falling on your knees before God and offering such prayers for your enemy as will do you good, if not your enemy. If you cannot reach your cursery sit down with your paper and pen and ink and write a letter to your foe ; make it savage ; " pile up the agony; " ransack your memory for epithets that shall, so to speak, gouge and bite and tear the soul of your enemy. Find scor- pion words and tie them to the end of the lash of your invective, and flay him soundly in your letter. Then lock your letter in your desk and take a walk. You will have such comfort in chuckling over the idea of the way you have rasped him ! Keep the letter seven days. It will not spoil. Perhaps you can improve it. Each day go back and see if you cannot put in a harder word. Spend a portion of each day in looking through the dictionary for some stinging epi- thet which your memory previously may not have recalled. Do this seven days, including Sunday, and then you will have sense enough not to mail it, and you will feel perfectly relieved. Try this plan ; we know it to be good. A friend of ours, a noted clergyman, once thought himself to be misrepresented by a newspaper. He wrote a letter to the editor, and, being on a visit to New York, he brought it to our study to get our opinion. We saw that what he had written had been a relief to him ; but we suggested that he should make it severer, and we said to him : " Doctor, put this sentence in ; " and we dictated something which was immensely savage. Lower down in the letter we told him to 5oo CHIPS AND CHUNKS " insert the following ; " and then we gave him a dictation as broad and hot as we could make it, so as to resemble a stream of lava. He was delighted at first to see the spirit with which we entered into the matter. When the whole thing was done, and we seemed to be satisfied, he became quite dissatisfied. He thought it was too tart. Indeed, he began to think it was too savage, and finally concluded that the letter would be a very unchristian thing for him to send. " Send ! " said we. " You are not going to send him any thing; are you ? You would not notice such an attack as that ! " " Not send it ! " said he ; "well, why in the world have we spent an hour preparing it?" " O," said we, "only to relieve ourselves. We don't care any thing for the editor, but we must let off steam." The laughter that filled our study was the best part of the enjoy- ment. The letter was posted to the person to whom it was ad- dressed and mailed in our stove, and the writer thereof and the editor aforesaid have since become very good friends. The steam had been let off. The boiler of our brother was saved, and no machinery that could work mischief was set in operation. Brethren, it is well enough to continue constant in prayer, but, you may depend upon it, it is very healthy to let off steam occasionally. "THE WOMAN IN WHITE." In looking over some papers lately we came across a correspond- ence which had escaped us. " The Woman in White" has long seemed to us a story which, quite as much as any other in our knowledge, exhibited extraordinary art in the management of the details, as well as in the cast of the main materials. Nearly twenty-five years ago this impressed us so much as to lead to the correspondence which we had forgotten, and now reproduce. It tells its own story: To Wilkie Collins. Raleigh, N. C, Aug. 10, 1865. Dear Sir : In a recent conversation in my family circle the question was started as to how much of a story was usually in an author's mind when he sat down to write his first page. Among others your " Woman in White " was instanced as a very remarkable case of a long story, compact with incidents and scenes, with rela- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 501 tive position and perilous combinations, a very large number of which are novel and exciting, perhaps scarcely any violative of probability, and all interwoven with a strange power, which keeps the interest of the reader alive and active from the first paragraph to the very last. Now, such questions as these arose : Were the young artist and his lady love, her husband and cousin, the "Woman in White" and her mother, Count Fosco and his wife, well-defined characters in Mr. Collins's mind before he began to write? Was the denouement determined in advance of all? Was Sir Percival's fate known to the author before he was introduced into the story? Was or was pot the first chapter written after the last ? If before, did the author know how he was going to use the flighty little Italian in connection with Count Fosco's fate? In any case did the author go back to insert some incident, speech or character- istic, to bear upon which he had written in a later part of the story? All these, and divers other questions bearing upon the rationale of the story, were discussed. Now, it so happened that none of our party had ever written a novel, or even a story, of any great length, and had never conversed with any au- thor on this subject. As your "Woman in White" has been specially discussed, I concluded to ad- venture a letter to you on this subject. If it amuse you and interest you enough a very great favor would be bestowed by such a history of the conception and execu- tion of that work, or any other, as you think would be acceptable to inquirers in psychology. Whether it suit your convenience and feelings to make a reply or not you will be pleased to consider this letter as sincerely complimentary to your powers, which I need not assure you are so highly appreciated on this side of the Atlantic. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, Charles F. Deems. Wilkie Collins, Esq. From Wilkie Collins. Elm Lodge, Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, Oct. 5, 1865. Dear Sir : I have had no earlier opportunity than this of replying to your letter. I think I can give what is called a practical answer to the questions prompted by your kind interest in my book. Neither the " Woman in White," nor any other of my serial stories, were completed in manuscript before their periodical publication. I was consequently obliged to know every step of my way, from beginning to end, before I started on my journey. To make this plain by an instance : When I sat down to write the seventh weekly part of " The Woman in White " the first weekly part was being published simul- taneously in All the Year Round and in Harper s Weekly. No after-thoughts, in connection with the first part, were possible under these circumstances, and the same rule applied, of course, week after week, to the rest of the story. I had no choice but to know what to do beforehand throughout the whole story; and months before a line of it was written for the press I was accumulating that knowledge in a mass of " notes " which contained a complete outline of the story and its charac- ters. I knew what Sir Percival Clyde was going to do with the marriage register, and how Count Fosco's night at the opera was to be spoilt by the appearance of Professor Pescer, before a line of the book was in the printer's hands. The minor details of incident, and the minor touches of character, I leave to sug- 32 502 CHIPS AND CHUNKS gest themselves to me at the time of writing for the publication. But the great stages of the story, and the main features of the characters, invariably lie before me on my desk before I begin my book. In the story I am now writing (" Arma- dale ") the last number is to be published several months hence, and the whole close of the story is still unwritten. But I know at this moment who is to live and who is to die, and I see the main events which lead to the end as plainly as I see this pen now in my hand — as plainly as I see the ground laid, months since, in the pub- lished part of the story, for what (if I am spared to finish it) you will read months hence. How I shall lead you from one main event to the other ; whether I shall dwell at length on certain details or pass them over rapidly ; how 1 may yet develop my characters and make them clearer to you by new touches and traits ; all this, I know no more than you do, till I take the pen in hand. But the characters them- selves were all marshaled in their places before a line of "Armadale" was written. And I knew the end ten years ago in Rome, when I was recovering from a long illness and was putting the story together. Such is the best explanation I can offer of all that is explainable in the mental process which produces my stories. I beg you will accept it as an acknowledgment on my part of the interest you feel in my books, and as some small repayment (made through you) of the debt of obligation which I owe to my American readers. Believe me, dear sir, faithfully yours, Wilkie Collins. To the Rev. Dr. Deems, etc. Mr. Collins departed this life on the 23d of September, 1889, after a long literary career of great industry. IN THE BOUDOIR THE. >-^-n=^F=^"^-^" THE » BOUDOIR, 5 ^p*^j A STORY OF A CHURCH BONNET. It was John the Baptist's Day in the city of St. Louis. I had been doing several days' work in Kansas and was on my way back to my New York parish. In eight years I had had but one Sunday of vacation, in view of which I concluded to make this particular Sunday my Sabbath for the week. So I betook me to St. George's Church for worship, and entered the house of prayer with most de- vout intent. Several things had been told me which my constant devotion to the pulpit had kept me from verifying. One of these was that it would do a pastor good to put himself in the place of the pew- holder and study the whole subject from the stand-point of the hearer and the worshiper. Men have told me that. Women also had told me that female dress had been a great obstruction to their piety, in attracting their attention from worship in the church, and had sent them home with uncomfortable feelings. I had been able to see the reason in what the men said more than in what the women said — largely, perhaps, because I am not a woman, But I am human. And this was my day. The morning prayer was Very helpful and got through without any serious difficulty, perhaps be- cause the reading-desk was on my left and my eyes were directed that way when lifted from my prayer-book. It is now recollected that there was something pretty or otherwise pleasant more nearly in front of me. What it was came into full play when I adjusted myself in the corner of my pew to listen to the sermon about to be 506 CHIPS AND CHUNKS delivered by my friend, the rector. Precisely in a line between him and me was a bonnet — perhaps the ladies would call it a " hat." I am not learned in this branch of knowledge, being, in fact, the standing amusement of the ladies of my domestic circle for my ab- surd and ridiculous ignorance of feminine gear. Hat or bonnet, it was a beauty. Would that I had sufficient mastery of the technique of millinery to make my readers take in all the details which were combined in the creation of this piece of capital ornament. Instead of such analytic description I must content myself with the unsat- isfactory, synthetic exclamation, " O, but it was a beauty ! " In general I may venture to say that the groundwork was black and soft and lacy. On that reposed, to that clung, or from that swung, a bunch of leaves and flowers, the differences and the contrasts and the harmonies of the colors and forms and combinations of which produced a most agreeable impression. My eyes ran just over the top of that bonnet to reach the preacher's face, and if they fell just one degree lower than that intellectual face they fell on that beautiful bonnet and — why should I not be honest ? — gladly rested there. How many trains of thought ran through my head ! I began to call up the different kinds of bonnets I had seen and the faces I had seen below them. While I could not recollect a single case of a lovely face below a bad bonnet I recalled some great disappoint- ments ; a notable one in Paris, in the days of my younger manhood, in the days of Empress Eugenie's loveliness and bonnets, when I made quite a little run to get in front of a carriage in which I had seen such a " love of a bonnet " only to be punished by beholding a dark, ugly, disagreeable, sinister female face. O, much of that un- edifying kind of thought ran through my head. While I was trying to hold tight to the thread of my friend's discourse on the rough, the lonely, the uncompromising, the un-Jerusalem preacher at the Jordan, my eyes would drop to rest on that beautiful bank of flow- ers. Then I found myself wondering whether this specially attract- ive combination of beauties had been made by the stately head that wore it, or whether it was the result of the laborious ingenuity of a New York modiste whom I know, or whether it had been imported from Paris or Vienna. It was in the midst of these conjectures that FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 507 I was recalled to a sense of my condition by the emphatic declara- tion of the preacher that John the Baptist stood in the loneliness of high integrity, unaffected by the opinions of men or those senti- ments of society which demand that when we are at Rome we shall do as the Romans do, and, in the language of the rector, "If we should have occasion to pass through hell we should do as the devils do, at least while making the transit." This naturally lifted me from speculations suggested by the sight of the beautiful bonnet. Some people have a way of closing their sermons with what they call an " improvement." I have a desire to " improve " this bonnet incident. Upon going out of church I found in myself neither ad- miration nor dislike of the lady who wore the bonnet. Indeed, I did not see enough of her face to form any opinion of her. But there was a set of stubborn facts. I am not a woman ; I am only a man. I am not young ; indeed, I have no child that is not probably older than the lady with the beautiful bonnet. My studies have not been largely in the department of aesthetics ; they have been in science, physical and metaphysical. And yet a Christian minister, who is suspected of being on the edge of old age, who had reached the city very weary from the delivery of a course of lectures to a body of clergymen on " The Ministerial Life," who was longing for the quiet of the sanctuary, who had heard but two sermons in twelve months and was hungry for the word, and who had come from his hotel to hear this particular clergyman preach because he had had long regard for him and interest in him — such a hearer has his worship broken by a thing not bad, not ugly, not disagreeable. " Shame on the old minister ! He should have behaved better ! " Is that your comment ? You are right, and what you say is true; and he will try to do better next time. But here is something which actually has occurred, and it cannot be ignored. Shall we not learn lessons from our misfortunes and privations? Shall I have put myself "in the place of the pew-holder " and " heard from the stand-point of the worshiper," and no good come of it? Nay, verily. Suppose I had been a woman and had had my bonnet on. Could I possibly have refrained from wondering whether my bonnet was as beautiful as that other bonnet ? I do not see how I could 5oS CHIPS AND CHUNKS possibly imagine it was more beautiful. Suppose it had been as beautiful. Then I was only on a par with another lady. But O ! and alas! there would have been a great probability that mine was not as handsome as hers ! Perhaps the people in the rear, some clergyman from New York, for instance, might have been making disparaging contrasts. How could I endure that ? You see, in the present state of fashion it is the worshiper in the rear who has to meet the whole thing ; those in front see nothing of it. The woman in the last pew cannot harm the congregation. The preacher sees no hats nor bonnets, except such as are built on the architectu- ral design of the Tower of Babel, or laid out and planted like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I left St. George's Church, St. Louis, as I might have left my own church in New York if I had been worshiping therein, or trying to worship therein, under similar conditions, if not a "wiser," I fear a "sadder" man. How often may it have occurred that when I had made all practicable preparations to preach the Gospel of the blessed God some attractively beautiful thing, unseen by the preacher, had stood between the man who had come to hear and me who had come to preach, and had broken the current and neutralized the effect of the discourse ! Can such things be prevented? Men do not wear any clothing calculated to attract attention ; it is the women. If reform come it must come from women. Will it? Where are those " Daughters of the King" of whom we hear? Can they do nothing? Will they not try? I talked it over with some ladies of the St. George's congregation. Any suggestion from a man might probably peril the reform. Cannot Christian women seek and obtain from God such a consecration of their aesthetic talents and culture as will enable them to devise some cure of an evil which is so great as to retard the preaching of the word of God ? Plainly, it must be the adoption of such a dress as will not call atten- tion to the individual wearer and will not be grotesque or offensive to, the beholders. All that is required is that it be tasteful and uni- form. I will not venture a suggestion, but I will describe a vision. I was in a sacred building. There was nothing to arrest or fix the attention. There were no figures in the stained glass, no in- scription on wall or ceiling, in aisle or nave, or chancel, or apse ; no FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 509 triangle, nor crozier, nor cup, nor paten, nor dove, nor lamb, nor monogram. The light was neither gloomy nor glaring, but sooth- ing. The air was perfectly pure, without being either too cold or too warm. The house was full of men, women, and children. The men all wore capes which covered their shoulders completely, so that that was all their dress visible to the naked eye. Of the same soft stuff, the color of which was a warm neutral tint, were the veils worn by all the women. These veils fell only to the waist, so that they did not incommode the wearer in moving about while in a sit- ting posture. They were all alike in cut and color and quality, and all pinned on their heads with the same kinds of pins, and fell in the same folds of drapery. Looking from the rear of the edifice one could not tell which of the women were rich, which poor, which pretty, which homely, which old, which young. The clergyman wore a plain cassock. The altar was the pulpit, behind which he stood while reading the Holy Scriptures, beside which he kneeled while leading the service of prayer, and in front of which he stood while preaching the everlasting Gospel. And he did not part his hair in the middle or have any thing else, even in the way of glasses, which you would remember when you went away. A portion of the service was silent prayer, and the stillness of these moments sank through your soul like a precipitate and dropped all its cares. In almost all the prayer the whole congregation joined, and the close of those offered by the pastor were accentuated by a full, rich, warm, hearty, prolonged "Amen." After silent prayer no one spoke for the space of minutes, and then the pastor arose and went down the aisle to the door, and the women threw their veils over their faces and the men folded their hands over their breasts, and all bowed as they passed their minister, who, with lifted hands and eyes, said : " The Lord, w T ho hath blessed your coming in, bless also your going out. The Lord forgive the sins of your holy things, and grant unto you the joys of his salvation. The Lord go with you, and bless you, and cause the light of his countenance to shine upon you, that his way may be known upon earth and his saving health among all nations." And next day and next night, in social circles and at appointed 5io CHIPS AND CHUNKS festivities, the variety and the beauty of the dresses of those women were really marvelous. You ask me where that church was ? Well, it was neither in St. Louis nor New York. ELEGANT SIMPLICITY. It is a dangerous thing for a party of the male sex to discourse on the subject of female attire. Every man of even the least cultivation delights in seeing women well dressed. The difficulty lies in settling the question of what it. is to be " well dressed," and that difficulty arises from the masculine ignorance of the details. As women pass before a man's eyes he knows at once whether the impression made upon him is pleasing or otherwise. But he cannot tell why. He doesn't know how much of an artist that woman had to become in order to be able to array herself in different garments that should have perfect adjustment to the person and perfect harmony of coloring. She has had to study, first, other women ; secondly, herself; thirdly, the masculine intel- ligence, in order to reach the consummation she has attained. Sometimes it costs pecuniarily to make such an achievement. The cost will vary according to the female artist's skill in using her ma- terials. The men who have to pay the bills, the husbands and papas, know something about this, and in the course of years secure a valuable education in this department of art and economy ; and, ordinarily, this class of gentlemen, if thoughtful and discreet, deliver tolerably rational criticisms on the subject. The men outside, the bachelors generally, are those who make mistakes in uttering their dicta on dress. As an example of this a young man says to his sister: " Why can't you imitate the economy and the elegant simplicity of the Van Bocker girls? They don't dress in silks, as you do ! For curiosity I inquired of a lady what a certain morning dress which I saw on one of the Van Bocker girls at Saratoga ought to cost. I learned that it was thirty-five cents a yard ; and they did look so sweet and fresh ! " " Quite true," said his sister ; " but you must recollect that few FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 511 ladies indulge in that kind of toilet ; they must have several changes, and each dress must have a large quantity of furbelowing and fixing to make it look well ; and the laundrying of dresses of that kind costs more than the mere washing of pocket-handkerchiefs. So that if economy is what you have in view, dear brother, a good dress that cost more at the beginning may last longer and in the end cost ess. The fact is, we may as well understand that elegant simplicity in dress, as in manners, requires an outlay which demands a good in- come. Showiness is cheap. Elegance must be paid for by both money and taste ; but still more costly is elegant simplicity, which for the indulgence demands more and more taste. To a looker on nothing seems so easy as to make graceful motion. As he beholds a gymnast or danseuse it seems to him as though it only required him to will to do the same thing in order to have it accomplished. But let him step out into the middle of the floor and try it. A few movements of his limbs will convince him that it will require months of practice, under tuition, to move with the simple grace of the person whom he supposed it would be so easy to imitate. In literature we take our models of simple elegance, the writings in which the paragraphs run after one another as the ripples of a brook. It seems as though we could certainly write in that way if we could not employ a more ambitious style. And what a mistake we find this to be ! Our attempts soon show us that it is much more easy to turn off our periods full of sequipedalian words and inflated bombast, and that a little imagination, Webster's Dictionary, and Roget's Thesaurus will enable us to write in a style which seems abso- lutely sublime to the uneducated masses. But if we were to write like an Emerson we must write over and oft, and take pains to cor- rect, expurgate, and polish, so that each word shall seem to be the very best possible in its place. Our readers can carry this thought into their meditations upon the formation of character. An elegantly simple character is one of the most charming things in the world. But what thought, what care, what constant discipline, what incessant practice of every virtue through what a number of years, are required to give a man the character of elegant simplicity ! Let our young readers ask them- 512 CHIPS AND CHUNKS selves whether it is not worth while to endeavor to attain such a character as will remain for the admiration of the ages, like the Apollo Belvidere in statuary and the Great Pyramid ; which shall be the admiration of mankind when ten thousand ephemeral prettinesses, produced by sculptors and architects shall have passed away. CENSORIOUSNESS. The dogma of infallibility is not a mere ecclesiastical develop- ment. The seed of it is in every human heart. No man will claim it in so many words; but who does not feel it? Or, if we were all unconscious of its existence, who does not act upon it ? So few of us have any horror of the responsibility of sitting as judges that we are ready to go on the bench at any time and try any cause, however important and complicated, and however slender the evidence on either side. We pronounce judgment as if there could be no appeal, and act upon such sentences as final. Nay, more. There is a disposition on the part of many to go be- yond and keep surveillance of society, making themselves general detectives. They are often heresy-hunters. They are often self- constituted health-boards, enforcing social sanitary regulations of their ow r n. The plain fact is that they are censorious. They hold every man guilty until he proves his innocence. Every act is con- sidered to have sprung from a wrong motive until the contrary shall be made to appear. The reason why they do not " abstain from " this "evil" is because it has the " appearance " of good. It seems to evince a high moral sense. It looks like loyalty to truth. It looks unselfish. The man is not seeking to be popular ! He dares oppose a popular vice and a popular sinner ! He dares beard the lion in his den ! He is a martyr to his sense of right ! It is good and grand ! He applauds himself. He feels that others ought to applaud him. He under- takes to execute his own sentences. If he cannot hang the con- demned he treats him as an outlaw. If he cannot literally trans- port him, so far as he is able he socially sends him to " Coventry." The condemned is treated like a lost man. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 513 All this is done that the purity of the judge shall be evinced. Men and women seem to think that kindness to a sinner is indorse- ment and participation of his sin. Hence the evil of social ostra- cism. A man that has fallen has so few helps to rise, and a woman who has fallen — God help her ! — has no aids but those which God gives. " Abstain from this evil " of censoriousness of temper, what- ever "appearance " of devotion to the right it may have. Be careful of your " virtuous indignation." I never find the least difficulty in getting up the requisite amount of virtuous indignation on any be- fitting occasion ; but I do find it very difficult to keep my indigna- tion virtuous. While burning the sin I ought to hate it will soon begin to flame up and burn the sinner, whom I ought to love. CHURCH COURTESIES. A well-known clergyman, in writing on other subjects, says : " But I did not sit down to write these preliminaries. I sat down to tell you how much good it did me, as I came down from the pul- pit during my vacation, to have a lady member of the ' Church of the Strangers ' ask me if she had not heard Dr. Deems speak of me, and then kindly give me God-speed on your account. It was a sweet and cheering surprise. And I have thought that it was due you, as well as the lady in question, that I should communicate the fact to you. Perhaps it is the habit of all your members. I would that it might prevail in all our churches." We thank our lady parishioner for her politeness to our gifted brother. We frequently have such kindness extended to us. It is very pleasing to have a stranger come up to the pulpit-steps and claim acquaintance because the far-off pastor of the stranger had said some- thing good of the preacher to whom the stranger had just listened. In this world of manifold naughtiness it is a mission of grace to go about telling every man you know all the good you have heard spoken of him, and by whom. It would lift many a man from his despondency. It would help to sweeten society generally. Do not be afraid of spoiling the person to whom you speak. More people are "spoiled " by want of praise than by any superabundant admin- istration thereof. It is thunder, and not music, which turns milk sour. 5 i 4 CHIPS AND CHUNKS HOW TO CURE GOSSIP. Adopt this rule : Let all who come to you with stories about mutual acquaintances know that you intend, as soon as your duties allow, to wait upon the parties spoken of disparagingly and repeat just what was said and who said it. Still better, take out your memorandum-book and ask the party to allow you to copy the words so that you can make no mistake. You will have to do this probably not more than three times. It will fly among your acquaintances on the wings of the gos- sips, and persons who come to talk against other persons in your presence will begin to feel as if they were testifying under oath. But, you ask, " Will it not be mean to go off and detail conver- sations?" Not at all, when your interlocutor understands that he must not talk against an absent person in your presence without ex- pecting you to convey the words to the absent person, and the name of the speaker. Moreover, what right has any man or woman to approach you and bind you to secrecy and then poison your mind against another ? If there be any difference in your obligations — are you not bound more to the man who is absent than the man who is present? If you can thus help to kill gossip it will not matter if you lose a friend or two ; such friends as these, who talk against others to you, are the very persons to talk against you to them. Try our rule. We know it to be good. We use it. It is known in the church of which we are pastor that if any one speaks to us disparagingly of an absent member we hold it our duty to go to that absent member immediately and report the conversation and the names, or, still better, to make the party disparaging face the party disparaged. We have almost none of this to do. Amid the many annoyances which necessarily come to the pastor of a large church, and still larger congregation, we think that we are as free from the annoyance of gossips as it is possible for a man to be who lives among his fellow-men. Try our rule; try it faithfully, with meekness and charity, and if it does not work well let us know. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 515 "RUSIAN GOSSIP." We believe that that is the name given to a parlor game which is as instructive as it is entertaining. Whether that be its name or no, the following is a description of the game : A statement is written, and read by one person to a second person alone. The first person retires and a third person is sent in, who receives it from the second person, and so on until six or seven persons have heard the narrative. The seventh person then rises in the company and states what was told him. The first person then reads the paper from which he read the statement, and the contrast between that and the report of what has passed through the hands of seven persons is always striking and often amusing. It illustrates the untrustworth- iness of reports that go through many heads and many mouths. It is not that " all men are liars." It is that we have limited capabil- ities, and that we are not accustomed to listen intently and to re- port accurately what we hear from day to day. We ask our read- ers to try this game and study the results. An illustration came under our own observation last winter. A number of ladies and gentlemen were assembled in our own parlors. We began to discuss the difficulties of reporting and the folly of relying upon reports. This led to the discrepancies which occur between witnesses of good character and acknowledged ability in regard to the simplest affairs which have come under their own obser- vation. To some of the company the views advanced seemed to be exaggerated. It was supposed to be so easy to hear any thing and then tell it. In order to test this matter and to give a lesson on the subject the writer proposed to take a gentleman into the back parlor and read to him a single sentence from a daily paper and let him report, as far as he could recollect, to another person who should be sent into the room until seven persons should have heard it and reported it. It was agreed that no other word should be said beyond what was necessary to the attempt upon the part of the speaker to repro- duce the impression made upon him by the former speaker. Now in that line of reporters was one distinguished lawyer, and one Chris- tian lady noted for the extreme carefulness and accuracy of her state- 516 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ments; and there were several other persons of different ages and both sexes. The first experiment was made in a little narrative which we extemporized for the occasion. The report of the last per* son was a most ridiculous contrast to what we read. We then pro- posed to test it in the simplest possible way. We took out the judge and read to him the following single sentence from the news- paper of that day. It passed through six other minds. The last person made a report. We had all promised to make our utmost effort to be accurate, as if we were upon oath. Here is the result. The sentence read was the following: * Warden Fox, of the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, this morning notified the coroners' office that Christie Snyder, the con- vict who was beaten by a fellow-prisoner a few weeks ago, had died this morning from his injuries in the prison hospital." The report made was the following : " Warden Cox, of Ward's Island, notified the Board of Health that one of the patients died this morning; name unknown." Our readers can see how little there was to recollect. None of us had left the house. Not half an hour had elapsed from the first reading to the last report. We had all put our minds to it, and we were certainly not self-conceited in supposing that we represented at least a company of average intelligence. There was no tempta- tion to misrepresent. And yet, there is the result ! Now, dear friend, whenever you charge your fellow-man with lying, stop and think whether the test which you applied to him if applied to you would not ruin your reputation for veracity. And yet all history is made up of just such reports as these. We never knew a man who was present at a battle or any other striking and stirring event who ever saw what he considered a true account thereof, nor could he produce an account which any other actor or spectator would pronounce to be accurate. We are almost prepared to state that we believe that no absolutely accurate history can be written by any one but the omniscient God. Such a belief gives no occasion to despair. The business of our lives is to train our powers and approximate, as well as our limited abilities will allow, to the capability of being accurate. We must endeavor to repro- duce the ideal, although we may never be able to realize it perfectly. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 517 In the preparation of history the philosphic intellect must collate the reports, and from what has been seen by many eyes he must form, according to the known laws of thought, a theory Of what actually did take place. In doing so he will be affected by his lim- itations and prepossessions. All these exist to such an extent that there are very many thoughtful people, whose opinions are worth something, who regard the Waverley Novels as just as good authority as Macaulay's History of England, or Lingard's, or Smollett's, or Hume's. Let us cultivate a love of the true and of the good, and endeavor to attain as much of these as possible by the aid of the Holy Spirit. PRESENTS. From time immemorial it has been customary to make presents. Gifts are supposed to be and intended to be tokens of kindness and respect. The peculiarity of a present is that it is a gift without the element of alms. A monarch may receive a present, but he cannot take any thing as a charity. A child may make a present to its parents, but cannot offer alms to them. In its highest signification the reception of a present implies a favor to the giver and not to the receiver. It is the latter that confers the favor. The former desires to have the pleasure of making some expression of regard. The re- ceiver gives that pleasure. It is never intimated that the receiver needs the present ; and so, w r hen the highest signification attaches to the gift, it must be something which costs the giver something to give, but does not at all serve the receiver, except as a sign of the devotion of the giver. When the wise men of the East made their presents to the infant Redeemer they brought gold and frankincense and myrrh ; they did not bring milk and clothes. They gave the divine Babe most costly things, which they had brought from a great distance, and of which the child could make no use whatever. That is giving in its highest poetical sense. Whenever a person of delicate perceptions desires to give alms he should strive as much as possible to put into the giving that high poetical idea, so as to take from the receiver, as far as possible, any 33 5 i8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS sense of humiliation he may have in receiving the gift. The strik- ing incident in the early history of the Bethlehem Babe has given rise to the beautiful custom of Christmas presents. These annual gifts do double service. They serve the cause of religion and of friendship. They put warmth into the icy heart of winter. They make associations that last through the years. They do good in many ways. In this Western world and in these modern times we descend from the high Oriental idea of gifts to the more practical methods of making presents ; nor do we think that any thing is lost by con- necting the idea of use with that of beauty. It requires great skill to make a present. It is easier to give fifty dollars clear out in money than to know how to spend five dollars for a present that shall delight and benefit the receiver and be creditable to the giver. He who receives must put the gift in some position in which it shall do honor to the giver. His natural sense of gratitude prompts this. Whatever is sent must be received. There is an old adage to the effect that " one must not look a gift horse in the mouth." It forcibly expresses the duty of the receiver to an observance of delicacy in the reception, and yet it is very hard to be supposed to have received an elegant steed from a friend when one has got only a spavined and broken-down hack. He who meditates the kindness of a gift ought somehow to as- certain whether the particular article will be acceptable. To send a splendid Maltese cat to a lady who is almost driven into epilepsy by the sight of even a picture of a feline creature creates a great hardship, especially if you inform the lady that you sent all the way over the sea and spent as much in the purchase of the animal as would support a poor family through a winter. To give a horse to a poor parson with a large family of children, whom he can scarcely support, would be burdening the man, because he would finally have to sell his horse, or something else, to pay his livery bills. Those who are going to make presents should ascertain, if possi- ble, what thing will keep in the mind of the receiver the most pleasant remembrances of the giver. The latter should be sure that the former has not already the very article which it is proposed to send him. It ought to be known whether the proposed gift will FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 519 be at all agreeable to him. You may send him a very costly book of which he has already two or three copies, when he would be de- lighted to receive some other book especially useful in his present studies. You may send him a picture of which he has already a copy, or which is very distasteful to some member of his family. You may send him some article of vertu which costs a great deal of money ; if he had the money he could buy three or four articles of both beauty and use, and put a remembrance of you in each prin- cipal room of his house. There would often occur to him the wish that he could make this change, and that thought cannot be pleasant. But, with all our blundering, let us all keep on giving, and let us all take, and let us all cultivate, as far as practicable, judgment and delicacy in giving and gracefulness and gratitude in receiving. Be- fore another number of this paper shall be issued we trust all its readers will have received in Christmas gifts the things they really need and such things as will be pleasant unto them ; also the follow- ing week in regard to New Year's presents. Above all, we pray that they may receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enrich and beautify and make happy, and that, in remembrance of God's largest grace to man in giving his only begotten Son unto us, we may every day have hearts to say, " Thanks be unto God for his un- speakable gift." PLEASURE-SEEKING. Pleasure-seekers are dreary mortals. They are worn without work. They have lost their strength and got nothing in return. One reason of this seems to lie in the fact that pleasure is not something wmich exists of itself and can exist apart from other things. It is generally overlooked that thought can be without pleasure, and so can effort of any kind — physical or moral — but there can be no pleasure without thought, or without exertion that does not aim at pleasure, or without the exercise of the moral powers. In this forgetfulness people get up " pleasure-parties," and go seeking enjoyment by itself alone. By carriage, by boat, by rail; in crowds, in solitudes, in cities, in woods, these seekers go. They go on holidays and holy days. They go out in crowds on Sunday to some 520 CHIPS AND CHUNKS " grove/' where thousands of other people congregate. They drag themselves and toil and dig for pleasure as for hidden gold. They do not find it. Their search is a " vexation of spirit," in the sense in which Solomon probably used the phrase — a beating of the wind. The same is the result with so very many of those who frequent our fashionable watering-places simply because they are fashionable. It is painful to see the toilsome way those people go, in their con- trivances to create pleasure for themselves and others. Hundreds come back from the sea-shore and from the watering-places be- dragged in body, mind, and spirit, more worn than many a soldier when he comes off a campaign. The reason is that pleasure is merely a result. We get it when we follow other things and lose it when we seek it for itself. If personified it seems a coquette. It is poetically represented as a sly nymph, who courts those who pay no attention to her, and im- mediately flies from any pursuer. The healthful exercise of the body, intellect, and heart, in the work which one loves, and is sure will prove profitable, always brings pleasure. The steady discharge of all duties always brings pleasure. The observance of the amenities and courtesies of life always brings pleasure. Recreation, release of one's self from work, that one may return to that work with more vigor, always brings pleasure. Pleasure is not an independent sound. Pleasure is the echo of the song which duty sings while duty works. You may see the singer and perceive what makes the song, but where are you to go to find what produces the echo ? You who go about God's wonderful world, seeking pleasure while neglecting duty, are voiceless echo-seekers. Silence has no echoes. The echo is the child of sound. Go up and down the mountains and valleys of so- ciety, singing the songs of piety and humanity, and from a thousand unseen heights there shall pour down into your spirit the echo men call pleasure. Pleasure is the answering chant of nature to the songs of the human soul. THE PASTOR'S STUDY. M READING THE SCRIPTURE LESSONS IN CHURCH. In some churches the lessons are prescribed by a regular calendar, leaving the minister no choice. In others he chooses the lessons as he chooses his text. There should be some guiding principles in this selection: (i) In the first place, let both lessons be selected so as to show the an- alogy of faith and the consistency of the spirit in the Old Testament and the New. (2) Let the lessons, as far as practicable, bear upon the subject of the sermon, showing the Scriptural ground of the main argument and appeal in the discourse which is to follow; so prepar- ing the people to yield themselves to the sermon, as being thoroughly in accord with " the mind of the Spirit in the word of God." (3) The lessons should be readable. It is not every part of the Holy Script- ures which can be read in public to edification. In choosing the lessons, therefore, of two portions of Scripture — either of which might meet the requirements stated above — that is to be taken which the minister can read with most effect. The lessons chosen, the manner of reading them becomes very important. No portion of public service demands more dignity, gravity, and gracefulness. There should be no hurry. The sacred volume is to be touched and handled with great respect. There should be no turning of the leaves to and fro, as if the reader were uncertain as to which were to be the lessons of the day, or were uncertain whether the book containing the lesson sought came before or after 524 CHIPS AND CHUNKS some other in the order of the canonical books. The leaves must not be tumbled or jerked ; the holy volume must not be shoved about on the desk by the minister of the sanctuary as a lawyer may push about the books of reference he has brought in his green-bag to the court-room. I have heard my mother tell how the very man- ner in which John Summerfield was accustomed to lay his hand upon the Bible increased her reverence for the glorious volume. If the minister have not a thorough conviction that the Bible is the " word of God," in a sense infinitely superior to that in which the phrase can be applied to any other book, he cannot read it aloud so as to produce the desired effect. In his tone and cadences there must be that indescribable something which makes even a stranger feel that the reader is not giving an elocutionary display, is not recit- ing merely the words of the man David, of the man Ezekiel, or of the man John ; but that he feels to the core of his heart that what he reads was spoken by the eternal God — spoken through psalmist, prophet, and apostle — to be repeated by preachers of the Gospel down to the end of ages. If he has ideas of Elohistic and Jehovistic authorship in any measure weakening his faith in the paramount divine authorship of that which he is reading, he cannot make his public reading of Genesis more spiritually edifying than his public reading of Thucydides, nor give to the book of Job more effective- ness than he can impart to one of the tragedies of ^Eschylus. In some pulpits the minister appropriately introduces the reading by saying, " Hear the word of the Lord! " and then names the book and chapter. The people must believe that he believes that it is " the word of the Lord " in very truth. This profound conviction of the inspiration of the Bible will not show itself by mouthing the phrases, as if they were too holy or awful to be pronounced or enunciated in the way the vernacular is usually spoken by scholarly and well-bred people. This mouthing shows itself sometimes in the utterance of the name of the heavenly Father. It does not increase our reverence to have him called " Gaud," nor as if his name were the word " Got" with the '* t " flat- tened. The fashion has been recently imported into New York of dividing the name of the Lord into two syllables. It is frequently heard in Irish pulpits also. Hearers might suspect an American FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 525 minister of affectation if they heard him say, " The earth is the Low-woods and the fullness thereof." It seems to spoil the reading of the Holy Scriptures to make a point of bringing out fully the " ed" with which many words end. The bad rule is followed by many of making that syllable distinct wherever it occurs. The rea- son assigned is that the Bible must not be read like any other book. That statement is true so far as the manner and spirit of the reader are concerned ; but it is not true if applied to the pronunciation and enunciation. In these respects the English Bible must be read aloud as any other English book is read aloud. One of the most trying of human experiences is to be compelled to listen to the lessons as they are ordinarily read in churches of the English Establishment. It is simply disgraceful. There is no attempt to convey any sense whatever. The theory seems to be that every hearer knows precisely every word that is read, and the reading is "gone through" simply to conform to some law, just as clerks of legislative assemblies rapidly and perfunctorily read a document which must be read, but which every member has studied in advance from a printed copy. It sometimes becomes ludicrous, and I have noticed that the " ed" termination seemed to increase the ridiculousness. Fancy a man reading with a rapidity which renders him breathless the following passage, sing-songing all along: "But it displeas-f" ■ji&i THE OFFICE. BUSINESS AN EDUCATOR. [An Address delivered in many places.] Perhaps we shall all agree that a brief and comprehensive defini- tion of education is a full and harmonious training of all the men- tal and moral powers. It is so manifestly every man's duty and interest to place himself under all available influences to secure this training that we need waste no time in discussing that topic. We need only pause to re- mind ourselves that this training must be harmonious, in the sense that the moral department of our nature stands as much in need of culture as our intellect. The temper of this age is to lay undue stress on the education of the mind ; as if a man needed only a strong intellect to make him a strong man. The apparent reason of this is in the fact that this is a material age, an age greatly engrossed in the accumulation of material wealth. For this the sharp intellect is important. And if a man's supreme dignity and most consum- mate bliss did lie in what he has, rather than what he is, it would be almost impossible to overestimate mere schooling of the brain. But the testimony of the world's history, the history of nations and of individuals, is, that no man is truly noble and wise whose heart does not grow good as his head grows great. In securing the development of each man, and thus the elevation of the whole race, it is quite possible, as in other things, to lose sight of the end in the means, and thus make the means take the place of the end. Hence, when we come to distinguish between classes of 592 CHIPS AND CHUNKS men, and speak of the " educated " class and the "uneducated" class, many of us fall into the error of supposing that they, and they only, are " educated " who have had a certain kind of training, and to regard all as M z/#educated " who have failed to enjoy that specific mode of training. Thus it has come to pass that school learning and business training are set over against each other, as most diverse, if not antagonistic. " Scholars" is a high name which we assign to those whose culture has been made in one set of schools — the schools whose instruments are books and scientific apparatus. These per- sons themselves have insensibly fallen into the belief that those are the only schools in which a man could be educated, and have claimed a kind of aristocracy of scholarship. This claim has generally been tacitly conceded by those who have never enjoyed those great ad- vantages — namely, the tradesmen and mechanics of the world ; even by such of them as have really attained great breadth of intellect and great humanity of heart. The result has been hurtful every way. On the side of the scholars of the library it has bred a disrespect for those who, however noble, have not had literary culture. Trade and the mechanic arts have been held as lower planes, on which only lower kind of men should work ; while tradesmen and mechanics have felt a kind of envy, sometimes of jealousy, of the men who, as they think, enjoy great honors without being practically useful to the world. Thus, trade has been at a discount in "society," and even tradesmen and mechanics have sought to use the wealth they have acquired in putting their children out of their own sphere ; and those children have acquired a contempt for the employments of their parents, and have become ashamed of the fact that their par- ents were mechanics and tradesmen. And some people of literary culture have learned to despise commerce, trade, and mechanical pur- suits, as having in them something, if not debasing, at least not ele- vating. The present speaker must by no means be understood to under- value the power there is in books and in the scholastic exercises of the library, the college, and the university. That power is incalcu- lable. Having been, perhaps, as little in the schools of trade as almost any other man of my age, and almost all my life conversant FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 593 with the schools of literature and science, what culture I have is mainly due to these ; and they seem to me to be very great and beautiful, and useful to all such as know how to secure the vast ben- efits they give. But I should have missed the best of these if they had not liberalized me sufficiently to enable me to see the good there is in other modes of training. It is to be recollected that all men cannot be always engaged with books and with the investigations of the closet and the laboratory. Some men must work with hands alone, some with brains alone, some with brains and hands together. The results in the first, in the second, or in the third, may be base and debasing, but not neces- sarily. Each department may be a great school. In each the man may become nobler, more developed, better trained — that is, more able, after one piece of work of whatever kind, to do any other work of whatever kind a little better than before. The schools of book learning and the schools of business training are so mutually dependent that neither should disparage the other. The Galileo who, in his tower or wooded height above fair Florence, turns his tube toward the stars and spends his nights and days in observation and thought, is dependent on the tailor that makes his clothes and the mechanic that builds his lofty room and mends his instruments ; while every sailor, trader, and mechanic is dependent for the results of his voyages and the very tools with which he works, and the very rules by which he works, to the astronomer, the mathe- matician, the cloistered student who is working out the problems that underlie all practical business. We must not divorce thought from action nor action from thought. I now address men who are, or are about to be, in business, buying and selling the various articles of commerce and constructing those things which are necessary for the comfort, the activity, and the progress of the race. I come to talk to them of the educational force which resides in their pursuits, and I trust to win their confidence by the assertion that I believe that all that is sound in judgment , correct in reasoning, and excursive in imagination may be brought to bear, with as much certainty of their growth, upon the questions of com- merce, of the laws of trade, and of the multiform modes of business, as upon questions of natural philosophy, the higher mathematics, 594 CHIPS AND CHUNKS and statesmanship. I believe that if such men as La Place, Sir William Hamilton, and Daniel Webster had devoted their abilities to trade they would have become millionaires ; and that if John Jacob Astor, Peter Cooper, and Cornelius Vanderbilt had given themselves to the studies of the closet they would have become dis- tinguished philosophers, mathematicians, and statesmen. It is wisely directed mental-power, however and wherever gained, which lifts a man above the masses. He is the most fortunate of workers in the affairs of the world who has had the advantages of literary culture and of practical business life. For a man who intends to devote himself to a life of literature and science it is an estate to know a trade. For a man who intends to devote his life to business it is a treasure to have had the pre- paratory training of the schools. But if any of you cannot have both let me encourage them by showing them, if I can, that business not only promises the material result of increased wealth, but also may secure the more priceless possession of a well-developed manhood. The comparison is not to be made between the modes of education, but between the results. The professed object of all mental training is the thorough devel- opment of mental powers ; the preparation of the mind to meet the actual emergencies and reap the richest fruits of life. For this purpose the instrumentalities used in the schools are studies in the languages with their classics, in the natural sciences with their objects, and in the mathematics with their applications. This describes, in brief, the curriculum which has obtained in our highest schools for ages. What are believed to be the results of those studies? They are supposed to train a man to greater powers of observation, arrangement, memory, calculation, reasoning, i?idustry, self-control, and virtue. They are believed also to purify the taste and impart general intellectual elevation. Let us admit that they do. Let us suppose that, along with the classics, all the examples of hero- ism and self-sacrifice which the history of the great records have their due influence on the scholar's mind. This is all that is claimed. Let it all be granted. Now we turn to trade ; legitimate trade ; that interchange of com- modities and of the products of skill by which men acquire material FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 595 property on right principles, by right methods, and for right uses. Take a man who has been trained for this and compare him with a merely literary man. If they change places is it not probable that the business man, with his well-trained mind, will as soon acquire all the learning of the litterateur as that the latter will learn all the ins and outs, the principles and practices, the far-reaching plans and use- ful applications of the former? In the preparation for business does not the commercial gymna- sium train a man to such results as are sought in our universities? Allow me to recapitulate them briefly, and to illustrate. To be a wise and successful tradesman a young man must train his powers of observation thoroughly. In this department, as in all others, the result of observation is the knowledge of the facts upon which must be based all great and practical generalizations ; they are the great stair-way to the lofty platform from which we survey the whole field of worldly operations. The tradesman or mechanic must cultivate his senses, those great instrumentalities of observation. He must learn to notice closely what is the intrinsic substance in any article which makes it at all valuable in the estimation of men, and he must learn what are those accidents which increase its commercial value. And he must ob- serve all those turns in trade which teach him when and what to buy, and when and what to sell. Can you perceive any thing in the experiments of the laboratory, or the researches of the naturalist, which more thoroughly trains a man's powers of observation than the purchase of groceries and dry goods, of woods, gums, leathers, furs, and the materials of which houses and ships and machinery are built ? A man who wants soap for his customers, and buys any thing that bears that name which the chandler chooses to offer him, is not likely to succeed. A man who has had close training in all departments of a retail and wholesale grocery would soon come to be a superior botanist, geologist, or chemist. A mechanic in the higher departments so studies color, form, and combination, that his work becomes akin to that of the artist. Few mental habits are so valuable as system. Without it all ac- cumulations of learning or property become heaps of trash. 596 CHIPS AND CHUNKS I once had a friend who was a walking encyclopedia. I have never heard him talk twenty minutes without learning something I never knew before or having some parts of my own old learning burnished. And yet I have seldom known a man whose learning was more useless to himself and to the world. His head was an Old Curiosity Shop, in which there was a specimen of all things ever walked in, eaten in, slept in, fought in, lived in, or died in ; and yet you could hardly furnish one decent small apartment with its con- tents. There were no bureau-drawers in his brain, as Napoleon said he had in his : one of which contained all he knew of one kind of things and another all he knew of another kind, and so arranged that he could open or shut them at pleasure. My friend lived to be an old man, and had had high scholastic ad- vantages. If he could have been five years an apprentice to Jeremiah Evarts or Stephen Girard, or any other excellent business man of his day, before going to his books, he would have rivaled Humboldt. The young man who enters upon trade is impressed with all the volumes of significance which are shelved away in that old adage, " A place for every thing and every thing in its place." The odds and ends of twine, the nail-box and hammer, and all the implements of the lowest offices of trade, as much have theirappropriate place as the ledger and the letter-book. I forget who has said that Sir James Mackintosh would have been one of the very greatest men England ever produced if he had known the important uses of red tape. The scholar in business has to make early acquisition of that lesson. And then he insensibly transfers this habit of system to his mental operations ; and if he knows less than his college-bred neigh- bor he may make better use of what he does know; and so in a few years he may not only outstrip him in business, but may actually outshine him in society. In regard to memory, the training of the schools, on the one hand, and the training of the shops and stores, on the other, contrast mainly in this : that the former uses words and the latter uses things. He who intends to compass great riches, or any other success in business, must have a long and a strong memory. He must remem- ber the history of all his failures and successes as he goes along, with the probable reasons. He must remember the history of cur- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 597 rent trade as long as he has known it. He must remember the aver- age price of the commodities he deals in through a number of years, as that is the point upon which successful operation in articles of merchandise must turn. He must remember the faces, places, disposi- tions, prejudices, whims, business, business connections, habits of thought, and trade, of all his customers. He must remember where and how and when a great variety of articles can be had. In a word if Cicero says that an orator must know all things, I venture to say that a business man must remember all things. The preparation for the successful prosecution of business in- volves continual cultivation of the powers of calculation. The elements of numbers are to be perpetually combined, and these combinations are very often to be made mentally and rapidly, and without the aid of blackboards and slates. It is true that the schools carry their pupils up to the higher calculus, and sometimes employ them in applying mathematical formulae to the motion of the celestial bodies. But business men are applying similar princi- ples to all the motions of the governments of the world, as the political changes in states and empires are making daily impres- sions upon the value of all the articles of commerce. Then calcula- tion ascends from numbers to great principles, and all the forces and results of social operations are to be measured, estimated, and calculated. The movement of a single man in a community is to affect a hundred business houses, and these shoot their influences through all the minor nerves of the system. The business man has to calculate these effects in advance and to act upon his calcula- tions. If the astronomer blunders in his tables he may rectify the error. The temporary mistake will probably work him no personal harm. But if the business man blunders he cannot rectify — he has staked and lost thousands upon his calculation. This very fact leads to the utmost particularity and care. The same line of remark reaches the development of the reason- ing powers. The tradesman deals with realities, not abstractions, and tests the validity of his logical processes, not by the formal syllogism, but by what is more easy of inspection to most men, and more im- pressive in form, the balance-sheet, in his counting-house, and the 38 5 9 8 CHIPS AND CHUNKS footing up of his bank-book. Probably there are no more abstruse, prolonged, and vigorous courses of reasoning conducted anywhere on earth than at our wharves and in our shops and counting-houses. And, other things being equal, he is the most successful man in trade who has best control over his power of examining the truth of propositions, of comparing those propositions, and of reaching safe and legitimate conclusions. He must have the states- man's ability. And he goes beyond the statesman often ; as the latter reasons from existing facts to inevitable conclusions simply so far as those conclusions reach his political status and affect his party, but the money-maker must do all that and then he must reason upon the changes which those results are to work upon trade generally, and upon himself and his investments particularly. The schools teach industry. All learning is the ant-like process of heaping sand-grains. And business — why, what does the word mean, if it does not imply sys- tematic industry ? Busy-ness is the very opposite of td/e-nQss. Its Latin mate, negotiunt, is very expressive ; nego otiutn, I deny myself ease — self-denial in order to accomplish a great purpose. If the scholar rise at the cock-crow, burn midnight oil, and work through the beautiful hours of day, cloistering himself when all the voices of nature call him out to sun himself in the sweet light and fan himself with the healthful breezes, there is the business man, up before the birds, plying his toil amid the carriages of pleasure and of trade, laboring in the sun and rain while others house them- selves, dreaming of green fields amid his sugar-casks and coffee- bags, his planes and saws and chisels, and writing up his account- books, while literary men are in the cozy lecture-room, or sitting in their libraries amid the singing bards or deep-eyed prophets of the earlier ages. If, in order to acquire learning, a man must separate himself and control himself, is not that virtue eminently cultivated by him who seeks to build up his fortunes in trade? No general who has thousands of men waiting his word of com- mand, no premier who has the helm of affairs in his hand, is oftener called upon to hold his spirit in the tight grasp of a will that seems to have no more tremor in it than a blacksmith's vice, than he whose whole fortune may depend upon the absence of flurry and FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 599 the presence of the perfect, clear vision of a serene mind ; a self- equipoise to be maintained through hours and perhaps days. In the preparations for these prodigious emergencies the business boy is taught to keep his own counsel, to control his passions and his face, in dealing with every variety of customers — the grave, the gay, the sharp, the savage, and the weak. A slight act of discourtesy, a slight appearance of wrong dealing, even where there may be honest intent, will forfeit him a friend who might have poured wealth into his coffers. No act of the clerk can possibly be separated from the fortunes of the principal. Every where, at all hours, in all habits, enjoyments, amusements, labors, investments, and conversations, he must keep a strong hand upon himself. He is at once the steed and the charioteer, and must live at both ends of the reins, with all his power and all his prudence. Talk of virtue — talk of schools of virtue — talk of the old heroic examples ! Let the world listen and admire and learn while you talk. But remember that virtue is the strength which turns aside from w r rong when wrong is very near and very wooing and very beautiful. Where are such exhibitions? In the churches and col- leges alone ? No. They are also where trade thrives or declines, where personal interest and fortune are pressing, where temptation becomes powerful in all the array of what men most do covet, when the spirit of the palace and the demon of the poor-house are standing apparently in contest for the man. Then, when he does right regardless of palace or poor-house, he is a moral hero. And thousands do it. Thousands in this city have done it ; have conquered — have wrestled down the temptation — and have gone on their way unenriched in their coffers but prosperous in their souls. It is easy to sit in cushioned arm-chairs and write about the base- ness of commerce ; it is easy for good souls who have no tempta- tions, whose piety is perpetually bolstered by prosperity and nursed by gilt-edged and morocco-bound books of morals and books of prayer, to launch anathemas against those who fall in the violent trials of trade and money-making. But who of us are so just, I will not say so generous, as to laud the blessed victors in the strife: the apprentice, the clerk, the master- mechanic and the merchant who have done right in the dark ; who 600 CHIPS AND CHUNKS have had the opportunity of laying hundreds on the credit side of the bank-book yet have not done it, because it would be dishonora- ble, but have dared to do right, although doing wrong seemed to promise instant relief from immense embarrassments? I thank God and I love humanity more when I think of such conquests. There goes one of those noble men to his home. The day's toil is done. He has barely made enough to meet his narrow expenses. He carries to his economical household the aching head and the toil- beat nerve. None but God has seen the immense temptation of the day. None but God has seen how he wrestled with it and how he has risen above the strife. He looks into his cheap evening paper while the tea-kettle sings on the grate, and there he sees paraded some generous act which costs the wealthy actor no sacrifice. Some little social hero is crowned, and he, the weary one, who has done more that day than defend Thermopylse, shall never hear any voice in his praise, shall never see any chronicle of his prowess, until the books of eternity be blazoned before immortal eyes. Then these records shall come. Then our wharves and shops shall send up troops of men and boys, the noble army of money-makers and trade-martyrs, who shall outrank Leonidas and Wellington. Do some fall? Are some too weak for the strife? Bethink you how many fall in the less hazardous, less tempting, less toilful path of easy social life. Think how many fall when apparently sur- rounded by all that can drive away the evil and cherish the good. As a clergyman and a man of books it becomes the present speaker to be charitable toward the men of trade. He has seen too many sink in schools, and alas ! alas ! too much wrong-doing in religous communities, to allow him to be savage with the sinners of the market-place. He has no apology for the one or the other, but prays God's mercy and man's charity for all : " Owning their weakness, Their evil behavior ; And leaving, with meekness, Their sins to their Saviour." Do you say that in trade there is much concealed crime? that men succeed in their oppressions and wrong-doings, reap the fruits, live FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 6oi in splendor, die, and are bepraiscd in funeral eulogies? That may- be. The day of full Apocalypse has not yet come. But show me the spot or rank of life of which this is not equally true. If the veil could be lifted, if all hearts could be known, if every history could be read, which of our professions, pursuits, or orders could escape ? Of all who do preserve their reputation calculate the few opportunities they may have had for sinning, and then add what so largely prevails every where, the wondrous " art of hiding " — and what would the showing be ? Would not our fashionable avenues present as loathsome a moral sight as Wall Street, or the docks along our river, or the factories on our water-course ? Let all the soft and silken sinners of our shaded and scholastic retreats be stripped and lashed into the crowd of detected defaulters, and then you shall have fair chance to make a comparison. If money-mak- ing trade does multiply temptations so much the greater the moral victory of those who conquer. A triumph where no battle hath been is worse than empty pageantry. And if now and then some greater wrong-doer meets with exposure, and some have been detected in the minor tricks of trade, let the men of the schools have charity ; let them not from their secure retreat taunt the poor swimmer in his agony as he sinks in the struggle to cross a current too deep, too wide, and too rapid for his powers. I would that all the world would commit to memory — nay, let me use the better, wiser, deeper phrase of childhood : I would that all the world would " get by heart " those richly human stanzas of poor Burns: "Then gently scan your brother man, And gentler sister woman ; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, To step aside is human. One point must still be greatly dark, The moving why they do it ; And just as lamely can ye mark How far perhaps they rue it. " Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us ; Me knows each chord — its various tone ; Each spring — its various bias. 602 CHIPS AND CHUNKS Then at the balance let's be mute. We never can adjust it ; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted." The product of a trained hand gives great pleasure to the producer, as the product of an educated mind does. What a delight to an author is his completed book, his well-wrought argument, his polished poem, his finished oration ! But every merchant or mechanic who does his work conscientiously and thoroughly has this great joy. A large business may be conducted bunglingly, although with great power. Sometimes fortunes are made in this way, the force of the worker achieving success in spite of his mistakes. But he might have done more by doing it better. There may be, and generally in case of success there is, a kind of rhythm and roundness, so that the history of a merchant prince is an epic. There are harmonies and melodies in a great life-work in business, which insensibly im- prove the tone of character. As a man comes more and more to per- ceive these, and to conduct his trade in accord with these, his tastes purify, even as his prejudices melt under the warmth of human contact. He may begin as a mere bellows-blower to an organist, but rise to be a master composer. He may begin as a mere chip- per of the rude corners of blocks of marble, but rise to be a real artist in sculpture. In any mechanical or mercantile pursuit a man may learn only what is necessary for utility — may care to know only how to do any thing without choosing to learn why the thing should be done in that way. But this is not necessary. If a mechanic or trades- man has a love for the beautiful, the ideal of beauty, he may both improve and gratify his taste by a study of the principles of his work ; and this culture, far from retarding, will greatly promote his material success. More and more, I think, will men come to see that there is an aesthetic side to the arts of business, as there is an aesthetic side to the arts of sensation and sentiment. A lawyer need not be a pettifogging drudge nor a physician a mere empiric ; nor is it necessary that a business man should always remain a mere buying-and-selling machine. The reign of law is as completely sovereign in trade as it is in the plastic arts. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 603 What high delights belong to the merchants and mechanics of a great city ! The former see their gains invested in vast and beau- tiful edifices and machinery, erected or manufactured by the hands and the skill of the latter ; and the latter, apart from all consider- ations of their growing reputation and of accumulated property, have a special aesthetic pleasure in contemplating their work. This is true, whether, with one philosopher, we consider aesthetics to be the idea of the beautiful as an indistinct perception or feeling ac- companying moral ideas, or with others identify the idea of the beautiful with the idea of the good. A carpenter may have done some work admirably well. It may be a warehouse, a mansion, a college, a ship, a church. He may fancy the vast heaps of merchandise piled in rooms that he has built, upheld by sleepers and joists that he has placed, and covered by roofs resting on rafters which he has constructed. Then he may walk up and down before a goodly mansion which he has helped to erect and think of the handsome men and beautiful women danc- ing on the floor that he has tongued and grooved, and the banquets eaten in dining-rooms he has finished, and of babies sleeping sweetly in nurseries which he has built. And then he may, in fancy, behold pale students over their books in cloistered colleges the lay- ing of whose bricks he had superintended and whose wainscoting was finished by his hands — scholars enjoying cozy " studies " which he could never have, but which his hands had made. And then it may be a ship, so taut and stanch because he has done his work so well down in the under part of the vessel, which no eye could see, but which would keep her good and strong for many a voyage. And then it may be a church, in which the wood-work of his hand may be resonant with the eloquence of the devoted preachers and the music of the singing multitudes; and when he passes it, and sees the portals he has made, he may rejoice in the gates of the house of God with great joy. Besides the cultivation and gratification of the aesthetic faculty mechanics and tradesmen may have in view also the accumulation of such possessions as shall lift them out of the cold pit of poverty and set them in large and wealthy places, materially and morally. We have heard much praise of poverty as an ally of genius and 604 CHIPS AND CHUNKS an incentive to effort. It has been thought unfortunate for a poet to prosper. The cold garret is supposed to be the favorite bovver of the muses. Very much such rhetoric is in our books of verse and prose, in our sedate lectures and pompous orations. We be- lieve the whole theory to be false. It is founded upon a wrong view of man and of life. God made man so that easy labor should produce competence and that large portions of his time should be employed in exposing his mind and heart to all the delicious ripen- ing effects of sunshine and nature's balmy breath. The greater the labor and the less the good and beautiful time spent among good and beautiful thoughts, the worse for the man ; and when all the time, all the muscle, all the nerve must be wrung out by the demands of labor, then the man is totally expelled from paradise. Whatever on that score he can safely avoid is so much of paradise regained. In support of this opinion I quote the authority of a remark- able English writer. Twenty years ago the British and American periodicals contained certain fugitive poems having great beauty of expression and a certain intense passionateness. They are from the pen of Gerald Massey, a poor boy — born and reared in a hovel too low for a man to stand upright therein ; a boy who early entered one of the factories where English white slaves do such toil as never befell American plantation-laborers, and received therefor twenty-five cents a week ; a boy who, when that same factory burned down, " stood for twelve hours in the wind and sleet and mud, rejoicing in the conflagration which thus liberated him." Above that sad condition he rose to sing songs which have thrilled thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. Hear him : " My experience tells me that poverty is inimical to the develop- ment of humanity's noblest attributes. Poverty is a never-ceasing struggle for the means of living, and it makes one hard and selfish. To be sure, noble lives have been wrought out in the sternest poverty. Many such are being wrought now by the unknown heroes and martyrs of the poor. I have known men and women in the very worst circumstances to whom heroism seemed a heritage, and to be noble a natural way of living. But they were so in spite of their poverty, not because of it. When Christ said, " Blessed are they who suffer," he did not speak of those who suffer from want FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 605 and hunger, and who always see the Bastile looming up and blotting out the sky of their future. Such suffering brutalizes. True natures ripen and strengthen in suffering; but it is that suffering which chastens and ennobles — that which clears the spiritual sight; not the anxiety lest work should fail and the want of daily bread. The beauty of suffering is not to be read in the face of hunger." Now, one great object of all true efforts in trade is deliverance from the degrading. It is the struggle to get out of the shadow into the sun. Shall we denounce that? No, no. Let us bid every right-hearted workman work on, work wisely, run the race with the prize never absent from his view, and fight the battle in full vision of the victory and triumph. Honor to the poet, say we ; to him who has set any one of God's truths to music which shall make millions of hearts chorus it to one another ! Honor to the teacher, who plants the oak-germ of many a tree which is to wave its glory above its strength in the great forest of humanity! Honor to the preacher, pure and powerful, who, on the eyes of those absorbed in the present and the perishing, presses the vision of the grand principles which engirdle the universe and fetches the realities of eternity down to confound the phantoms which dance so deceivingly around us ! But let not another be forgotten in our paeans. Before we part let us look in on him. There he is amid all his work : the wise and successful tradesman, the toiling and prosperous mechanic. See his plans. They are as wide as the world, and their end is in the highest heaven. Their path is every-where, their aids are all things. He has never adopted " The simple plan That they shall take who have the power, And they shall keep who can." He has never rendered the worship of his heart to gold : " Gold, gold, gold, Bright and heavy, hard and cold, Heavy to get, and light to hold." Gold is his slave, and not his master. Gold is the sign, and not the thing signified. Gold is the means, and not the end. 606 CHIPS AND CHUNKS How skillfully he detects the nature and relation of things ! How strongly he holds all things, nothing holding him ! Calculate, if you can, the value of such a man. See how power- fully his example stimulates every-where — how many learn from him the practical uses of all high virtues, and how the laws of heaven are to be fulfilled on earth. Observe how many little fami- lies draw the waters of life which flow from this great central reservoir — to how many children he shall never see he sends tides of joy and happiness. Behold how his mind expands, and how his heart purifies, and how he links himself with all things human. It is he, and such as he, that built that school for the bare-footed boys and erected that college for our growing youths. It is he who shot that church-spire to the skies, planted that pulpit, and sustained the " man of God " who teaches all communities the principles which preserve order, suppress vice, diminish the woes and multiply the hopes and joys of our struggling humanity. He finds time to look from himself to others and learns the vast lesson of an interlinked and indissoluble brotherhood. He is the father of the sciences and the lover of the arts. The low men and the low things he comes in contact with do not spoil his lofty spirit; he beautifies them, as the sunbeam is never tainted by the cess-pool upon which it falls, but out of that corruption brings up a beauty and a blessing. Ye noble host of laborers, I would it were mine to give you a right brotherly and scholarly benediction. Let your part be truly, fully done, in showing the world that trade is a science, an art, a philosophy — nay, a very piety itself. Let every store and shop be a school, every chair a pulpit, every man a preacher of the true and a doer of the noble ; and all your shops and warehouses and wharves will brighten, poets will come and harp among you, as minstrels did of old in lordly castles and high ladies' bowers ; and philosophy shall find that the academy and the porch of the nineteenth century are where men are applying to the Present all the lore of the Past, and creating physical and spiritual beauties to live in the future. And wherever we are, whatever field or garden we till, whether our place be the parlor, the studio, the counter, the mechanic's bench, the farmer's field, whether our calling be handicraft or brain- craft, whether the scholar's learning or the trademan's coffers prom- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 607 ise us the key that opens the gate of glory, let us duly remember the warning of the poet bard of Scotland, who struggled in his toil — the Actseon of spirit gripped by the Hercules of passion — who fell with his heart full of such sorrows and his mouth full of such pleas as should move us all : " It's no in titles nor in rank, It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, To purchase peace and rest ; It's no in making muckle mair, It's no in books, it's no in lear, To make us truly blest ; If happiness have not her seat And center in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest ! Nae treasures nor pleasures could make us happy lang ; The heart ay's the part ay that makes us right or wrang." TRADE-LIFE. : ITS POETRY AND ETHICS. [An Address first delivered before the Library Association of Petersburg, Va. March 16, 1855.] Ladies and Gentlemen — To engage your attention a short time for entertainment, and I hope instruction, I propose the con- sideration of Trade-Life in some of its poetical and moral aspects. And this selection is made for precisely the reasons which some might urge as setting it aside from our purposes ; namely, that many who hear me may suppose themselves not directly concerned in this matter, that it is believed by many to be destitute not only of the elements of poetry but of humane developments, and that it is not immediately connected with the studies and pursuits of the present lecturer. For purposes of mere brilliant success it is thought that a man should be absorbed in the business he has in hand, and should so suffer his faculties to be engrossed and his capabilities to be enchained by his own occupation as to find neither time nor inclination to interest himself in the pursuits of his fellows. This is partly true and partly false. Concentration of energies, like concentration of troops, will carry a battery or break a solid square ; but no power conducts a cam- 608 CHIPS AND CHUNKS paign without considering the status and operations of all other powers. So in our several callings. There is no trade and no pro- fessional employment which may not — and for its complete success must not — understand its relations to all other trades and employ- ments. Our danger is in isolation. The whole power of selfishness draws us back from other men to our own lines of work, while a wise self-love would lead us to connect our toils with those of others for the double purpose of advancing them and of advancing our- selves. We are taught by science that the smallest particles of matter exert attractive influences upon the largest masses as certainly, although not as powerfully, as the largest masses upon the most minute atoms. This is true in trade. The most abject little bare- footed peddler of matches in your city as surely affects the whole- sale importer, and the astute lawyer, and the ablest clergyman, and the most beautiful belle as the great mass of trading, talking, smil- ing, teaching, and governing society affects him. He is a drop in the chemical compound, modified by all and modifying all. He is not to be neglected in the analysis. And so on a larger scale the departments of human actions inter- flow and interwork. Agriculture, mechanism, smaller trade, larger commerce, and clerical, legal, and medical operations, are inter- dependent. Is it modest to select my own profession for illustration ? Well, then : the clergyman whose whole life is spent in studying the mummies of old philosophies, the fleshless skeletons of scholastic systems, will become a very learned man without doubt, and will astound his parishioners who can keep awake during his sermons ; but if he expect to make them feel the powerful doctrines and grand truths of the people's Christ he must study the workings of mind in him who follows the plow, must investigate the relations of the spinning-jenny and the locomotive to the apparatus of the Church, must survey the capabilities of trade and commerce, the special trials of those engaged therein, and the bearing of Christian ethics upon their vicissitudes of depression and success. The Sermon on the Mount must be carried home to the business and bosoms of artists and artisans. The preacher may find himself improved by beginning the preparation of his discourses on his knees in his closet FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 609 and completing them on the docks, in the shops, and counting- houses, and market-places. No lawyer will injure his prospects at the bar by studying the large and quickening principles of Bible theology ; the theologian will find himself liberalized by an investigation of the elements of common law, that great embodiment of the great world's common sense; and the physician should know the laws of mind and the effect of brain-labor and hand-labor and the pressure of society upon individual growth, health, and activities. If these general views be correct there is no man and no woman who is not interested in trade-life. Trade, that occupies such vast numbers of our fellow-beings ; trade, that penetrates every hamlet, every cave, every swamp ; trade, that has existed from the beginnings of the growth of human society ; trade, that has made so many pages of history, sacred and profane ; trade, that has explored con- tinents, discovered islands, thawed the poles and cooled the equator; trade, that has engaged so many minds in the consideration of its social and ethical principles ; trade, that sends sap to the extremest twig of the social tree ; trade, that has begemmed the world with cities and embroidered the seas with fleets ; surely, trade, the great golden girdle of human brotherhood, demands our profound con- templation. There are those, affecting to be very refined, who shrink from trade and trades-people as actually contaminating. They sit in luxuriously soft carriages, and have goods brought to them by their footmen, and have a sweet horror of labor ; hold soft white hands at premium and touch every article of trade through kid. They count in their set and ticket to their drawing-rooms only such persons as neither labor nor have labored. The strenuosity with which they abstract themselves from trade and merchant-life should find compassion in our eyes. The " grandmammas " of some of them purchased ap- ples by the wholesale from the " grandpapas " of others, and retailed them at the corners of the streets. Peddlers and hucksters, most respectable people, were the foundation of the house ; and, like most houses, the strongest and best part is under ground, and the lac- quered and tinseled cornice hath great trepidation, lest some rude wind should blow aside the loose earth and reveal the rough 6 io CHIPS AND CHUNKS but strong granite on which the edifice reposes. Poor, delicate cornice ! There are other some who are prodigious philosophers. They excoriate the husk, penetrate the kernel, and pronounce trade a low earth-work and debasing ; groveling ; a slave-toil for besmalling ends. They would have all the people who trade and traffic, who compre- hend the philosophy of percentum and who study the prices-current, to turn from such despicable waste of mind-strength and occupy their abilities on the sublime contemplation of transcendental the- ories. Such a philosopher comes to some hard-working merchant at his counter and addresses him after this fashion : " Friend, know- est thou that thou art a man and hast a soul in thee ; a live soul ? Is it thy life-purpose to hoard and hoard and walk the tread-mill of interminable trade ? Wilt thou sink thy God-given force, thy sacred celestial life-essence, to the ignobleness of ledgerdom ? Thy tongue should give soul-utterances to darkened humanity, and talkest thou in the jargon of pounds, shillings, and pence — dollars, dimes, and cents? Hateful jingle ! Abandon thy mammonish superfluity of desire, and come up to serene and manful comprehension of the great life-problems/' Now, our friend, the merchant aforesaid, is a plain, practical man, and in the profound sentences of our philosophic friend he barely sees ideas standing as men dimly see trees in moonshine. The mer- chant commenced life with little beyond his common sense and strong resolution ; but he is rearing his family respectably, lives in a comfortable house, clothes and feeds and schools his children, and is laying up something against a rainy day. From his own labor he perceives material results, while he sees the philosopher in threadbare coats, knows that his family are huddled in a garret while he is refining upon ideal philosophy, and that his children shiver in thin garments while the father is in raptures over Sartor Resartus. The merchant has dipped into that book and come away with no diminished respect for dry-goods in the piece or dry-goods made up. Both these, our friends, may be wrong — and probably are ; because both are ultra. There is such a thing as drawing out truths to so fine a thread that they will sustain nothing real or practical ; and FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 6ll then there is such a thing as becoming blind to the great principles which underlie all labor, and elevate all toil, and sanctify all suffer- ing, and refine all gross and sensuous things. Let our merchant friend remember that there are quacks in philosophy, as there are " confidence men " and " Peter Funks " in trade, and that philosophy rightly pursued is a high and blessed and blessing thing ; that there are noble men who bring strong, clear intellects to the elucidation of principles which have quickened the commerce of the nations and brought thousands into his coffers. Let him remember that these men are unassuming and modest, and that while they are bountifully enriching others they are often very needy and seldom very rich. And let the retired, contemplative student of principles remember that many a man who has the dust of the packing-room in his hair has many a thought that runs parallel with his own ele- vated line of thinking, and wraps itself around the bulk of com- merce and comprehends the operations which promote the wealth of nations. Let Girard and Astor reverence Adam Smith, and let Adam Smith cherish very high respect for Astor and Girard. "There is no poetry in trade ; it is low and dirty." So says a sentimental miss, and so believe the most of men. Whether there be poetic elements in any subject depends much more upon the eyes which look on it than upon the subject itself. To many men there is no poetry in the stars, no grandeur in Niagara, no music in the breathings of God upon the harp-strings of primeval forests. Unmindful of results, such observers would regard a bargain as a mere bargain ; a caravan as so many ugly camels and stupid drivers. They belong to the class of Wordsworth's potter : " A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more." " The Iliad for War and the Odyssey for Wandering, but where is the great domestic epic ? " quotes one English writer from another, and adds, " Where is the great commercial epic? " We say, " Not written yet, but it will be written." A distinguished critic of He- brew poetry combats the common notion that epic poetry is the earliest. He believes the epics were preceded by unwritten lyrics, 6i2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS which were not preserved, and the epic has seized the precedence by the fact that it was the first written. The lyrics of labor and commerce have begun to sparkle in our literature. I pass by the sea-songs which trade has wakened on her watery way. There are two other poems in the English language which must live while men have hearts to sympathize with suffering, strug- gling weakness, or to draw sap into their manhood from the noble independence of the rigorous, successful worker. I quote them because both subjects are the farthest removed from the refined and the grand, and are pearls plucked from the deepest and murkiest waters of the pool of trade, and because each has a moral for him that idles and for him that toils. I allude to Hood's " Song of the Shirt" and Longfellow's " Village Blacksmith." A more unpoetic place than a bare garret, a more unpoetic person than a thin, sallow seamstress, and a more unpoetic article of rai- ment than a shirt it were rather difficult to imagine. And yet the poet has invested these all with a radiance which will stream over Christendom and down all time. The faculty divine has snatched the thread from the seamstress's attenuated fingers and attached it to the great thread whereof the woof of humanity is woven. Our Longfellow sings in another strain. His hero is a man, large and strong, but working for the feet of the horses which draw the drays of trade and commerce. The poem is an intellectual and moral tonic. The blacksmith is no myth, no fictitious personage. He has a rough hand, but it wipes a tear from eyes not yet dried by the fires of the forge. And blessed are the merchantmen who do not sell their tears ! A very prosy place is a smithy, dark and dirty; but it is hence to be a Vulcanic palace, teaching men the great lesson of shaping their fortunes by their own vigorous blows. [In delivering the address Hood's "Song of the Shirt" and Longfellow's " The Village Blacksmith " were repeated, but they are so familiar that I will not reproduce them in this volume.] These poems show what poets can see in trade and in the very lowest forms of mechanic production. And there are the writings of the powerful "Corn-Law Rhymer" and of " Barry Cornwall," whose poetry, Lord Jeffrey says, " laps us up from the eating cares FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 613 of life in visions so soft and bright as to sink like morning dreams on our senses." And there are the " Songs of Labor," by Whittier, whose " Shoemakers " is a ballad having the genuine ring of song in its music, and links the labors of a humble mechanic's shop with far-off and poetic places. And there is the fact that poets are com- ing up from such shops with fancies which rival the delicacies and gentlenesses of poet-laureates. Who shall hereafter say there is no poetry in trade? Survey the past, and see what trade has done for history. Nations grew to greatness from their geographic positions, and these posi- tions had reference to advantageous trade. The necessities of men demanded that time should not be wasted in the pursuit of purchasers for the products of the fields and the fabrics of the workshops. Hence sprang merchants. The quickened streams of trade filled up. the ready reservoirs, and new channels were to be opened, and thus- came commerce. And commerce brought luxuries and ornaments as well as new comforts, and hence new distinctions in society, for which personal and family ambition struggled. These struggles extended to nations, and hence wars and all the heroic parts of history and poetry. Repugnant as the theory may be to some scholars it is nevertheless true that the great expeditions on land and water, the great achievements which have covered the actors therein with glory, and been the foundation of history and the themes for song, have all been wrought and fought for trade. The desire to protect interests already established and to snatch pros- pective monopolies has kindled the martial blaze in all ages, from the day that Jason launched the Argo in the harbor of Iolchus down to the fall of Sevastopol. Scholars love to dwell upon the glorious literature of the ancients, and the monuments of their progress and renown, without having much thought for, and certainly having no enthusiasm over, the low, small agencies of such stupendous results. The grandeur of the Assyrian monarchy, as held before the lights of history, sacred and profane, and as exhumed by the industry of Layard and others, Nineveh glittering on the Tigris, and Babylon surrounded by a wondrous extent of solid masonry, are subjects of industrious study and profound admiration ; but who gives to trade its rightful 89 6 14 CHIPS AND CHUNKS place in the glory of erecting cities which to our modern fancy seem to island the barren sea of the past and shine in a mist we cannot penetrate ? Athens, the star of Greece, with all its poetry, philoso- phy, legislation, and heroism, will lend light to literature as long as letters survive, but the Areopagus, the Academy, and the Porch had had no existence without the port of Piraeus. The eye of literary enthusiasm flashes in the sunlight of genius as it watches the flight of Pindar, eagle of song — "The pride and ample pinion That the Theban eagle bare, Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air " — soaring and screaming in the heaven of mind, and gazes awe-struck upon the vast human woes which surge irt the tragedies of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides ; it appreciates the sagacity which founded the Grecian games, at which the histories of Herodotus and Thucyd- ides were interspersed with the lyrics of Anacreon and the higher songs of the great tragic poets we have mentioned ; but it fails to see that it was trade which drew the thousands, the ol noXXol, the masses, and that these crowds were in the place of our newspapers, maga- zines, and quickly and cheaply produced books, and that the shout of those crowds was reputation, startling the echoes of succeeding cen- turies. It was personal interest which drew together sufficient numbers to kindle the fire of emulation in the minds of the gifted. It may not be uninteresting to examine two notable illustrations of the fact that trade makes history. We select, first of these, the period of the fall of the Assyrian Empire. One of the influential monarchies which rose on its ruins was the Lydian, whose most important history begins with the arrival of Gyges at the throne. This monarch fixed his capital at Sardis, in the midst of a productive country. The people were in- dustrious, and brought from their fertile soil more than a necessary supply for the wants of the population. They were therefore led into large commercial transactions, which were increased by their skill in various arts and manufactures. It is believed that they first used a stamped metallic currency, their river Pactolus yielding gold FOR E VER Y FIRESIDE. 6 1 5 with its sands. To the west of this thrifty people were the Greeks, and near them the Grecian cities of Miletus and Phocsea. From the Lydians the Greeks learned to work in metals, to weave, and to make the beautiful dye called Lydian purple ; and thus the whole Grecian character received an impulse in trade and general cultiva- tion. Moreover, while Lydia was productive, it was inland and could not transport, and so the commercial Grecian cities on the coast were made immensely wealthy by the Lydian trade and en- riched the Lydians in return. Miletus became very powerful and planted at least eighty colonies — one hundred and eighty, if Seneca made no mistake. It also produced two of the seven wise men of Greece. The Phocaeans left their city when Cyrus carried his con- quests through Asia Minor, and, after various enterprises, located themselves in Gaul and built the city which they called Massilia, and which now bears the name of Marseilles. We perceive in this case how the productive pecuniary operations of that small but important monarchy made the history of the great Greek people in first giving them the stimulus which elevated them into consideration and brought them into the great race of nations ; and an acute English author says of Athens, the city of Greece, u her greatness was essential to the intellectual energy of her sons, and the fruits of that intellectual energy, all rhetorical common- place apart, have largely contributed to the enjoyment, to the re- finement, to the freedom, and to the well-being of mankind. '' Again, it is interesting to consider how the mere trade interests of Marseilles have modified the fortunes of France, and what they have had to do with the grand projects and brilliant achievements of Bonaparte, how they stood related to his famous continental sys- tem, and thus connect the movements of Croesus and Cyrus with those of Napoleon and Wellington, and the siege of Sardis with the catastrophe of Waterloo. In several different ways may it be shown that the great cable of trade, stretching over the chasm of thou- sands of years, sustains the bannered trophies of war and the brilliant monuments of peace. Another illustration is found in the case of Great Britain ; an un- inviting island rising from the cold seas of the North, visited by the Romans for its little trade, yet gradually growing and improving its 6l6 CHIPS AND CHUNKS physical advantages, until Rome has sunk from Caesar's grasp to the timid hand of a driveling priest while the little queen of Britain shakes the land and sea with the thunder of her power. What would be Oxford, and what Cambridge, if Liverpool and Manches- ter were not ? Her artisans have supported her artists, and that nation of shop-keepers is the nation of Bacon, Locke, Newton, Shakespeare, and Milton. The East India Company, an imperium in imperio, shows how trade makes history. A joint-stock associa- tion, chartered anno 1600 to trade with the countries eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, has grown into a power whose governors- general almost take rank in history with hereditary potentates. It has its legislative, judicial, and military history, and has been the field upon which some of the most distinguished names of England's heroic men made their debut for immortality. Strike from history all that the East India Company has done and caused to be done during the last two centuries, and you shorten the column of Fame. See what trade has done for the face of nature. Where forests grew there stand the lofty chimneys of the smoking workshops in which men toil the week through, and there the bright spires of the churches where the weary workers betake their souls for solace on the Sabbath-day. The far-off inland seas are tied by the shining threads of canals to the great ocean. Hills sink, and valleys rise, and the thundering locomotive whirls the man of business to his place of labor, the literary man to his chair of instruction, the belle to the party of pleasure, and the philanthropist to the scene of suffer- ing. To him who from some lofty mountain-top looks down upon the valley and the plain there is no longer the unbroken density of dark forests, but cheery farm-houses, fenced fields, sleeping herds, moving vehicles, the factory of him who is growing rich, and the palace of him that has grown rich. The song of the drover, the ring of the anvil, the stroke of the hammer, and the whizz of the saw come up to him mingled with the chiming of bells and the shouts of merry school-children. Trade has not only built her workshops, but she hath laid out upon the bosom of the earth the school-house, the lyceum, and the university. She hath waked the world to labor and set its activities to music. Let religion acknowledge her debt to trade. The life, the stir, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 617 the movement of the working world have aroused the mind of man to consider questions which rise far above those discussed in the chamber of commerce, on the exchange, and at the boards of council. Trade has built colleges and churches and hospitals for Religion. Trade has brought of her substance to lay on the altars of Christianity. Trade has cut through jungles to make a path for the missionary and has unfurled her snow-white sails, like wings of doves, to bear the man of God to the ice-mountains of Greenland, to India's coral strands, to Africa's sunny fountains and many an ancient river and many a palmy plain. The Bible was needed, and the minister ; but there were also needed the adze and hammer and saw of the mechanic, the depot of the grain merchant and the coffer of the banker. It is a great mistake to suppose that the pursuit of trade, whether upon a small or a large scale, necessarily interferes with the cultivation of the habits of piety. Christianity is adapted to every pursuit of man. It goes down to every business and sanc- tifies it. It seizes upon every opening, travels in every train of trans- port, mingles in the crowds of the markets, and intones the hymns of Zion with the shout of mule-drivers, the songs of the workshops, the jingling bells of slow-paced caravans, the roar of furnaces, and the flash of ocean-steamer's wheels. To him who has consecrated his faculties to the progress of the cross it is most interesting to feel that every noise which resounds through dockyards, that every cart which bears its burden of dirt along the line of a growing rail- way, that every post which rises to hold up the threads of the elec- tric telegraph, and that every ladle of molten iron which is poured into molds to make machinery — that all these are working for Christ. The nations woke to literature, to trade, and to religion, at once. The night which made the Dark Ages rolled off to leave in full dis- play the press, the workshop, and the Church. Merchant princes have been the nursing fathers of the Church, and wherever a wholesome activity has been aroused there religion has had her office. There is nothing in the doctrines of the Bible and the processes of spiritual regeneration consistent with slothfulness. Our most holy faith finds its largest and most glorious triumphs among the busiest and most prosperous people. Trade is the handmaid of religion and religion is the sanctifier of trade. 618 CHIPS AND CHUNKS In no period of history has trade been pushed with the vigor and intelligence which mark the present. In no period has so much cul- tivated intellect been devoted to the interests of trade. In no period has art so bent her energies to embellish the pathway of merchant life. At no period have such prodigious results been achieved, whether we consider the immense private fortunes which have been accumulated or the changes which have been wrought upon the routes of commerce and the policies of nations within the present age. Works which a century ago would have been very cautiously undertaken by a nation are now achieved by a single man. Obstacles which would have appalled a host of laborers are scarcely accounted now. Mountains which laid their veto on enterprise are cast into the midst of the sea or penetrated by the shrieking locomotive. The question is no longer, What can man do? but, What can an Amer- ican not do? Demonstrate that anyplace must be reached in a given time and it shall be reached — by land, water, or air. The story which Mr. Samuel Slick, that wonderfully philosophic historian, tells of Mr. Samuel Patch, to the end that said Patch, making the leap of Niagara, came up in the South Seas, will be apocryphal only until it be absolutely necessary to make a through passage. When Lieutenant Maury, or any other equally scientific gentleman, demonstrates that the growth of this country, in all her pecuniary interests, will be greatly promoted by direct communication between the Canada lines and the other side of creation, dare any doubt that some Patch shall be found who will catch one end of a Morse's telegraph wire in his teeth, and make the plunge, and carry his coat of asbestos through all central fires, and tie the electric cord to some part of Australia? And shall we not then have a tunnel in which packages of men, women, and children shall be put through on the principle of atmos- pheric pressure ? What is to hinder " Young America " from sipping his breakfast at the St. Nicholas and placing himself in a spring- frame and drawing a long breath and holding it till he is turned out in the delivery-office in San Francisco some time before the sun-up of that Occidental meridian ? Show that it will pay, and cost is noth- ing, and obstacles are nothing. The personal rewards of great undertakings are so very large and attractive that the young, the strong, and the ardent, are drawn to FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 619 embark their all upon enterprises making such large promises. They pass along your streets and see the stately mansions in which the retired merchants live ; houses that stand behind gardens of beauty and in the midst of fountains and statuary, and whatever affluent ornaments architecture can sell to mammon. They see the rich car- riages at the gates, with pampered steeds and pampered drivers, and the rich light from gilded chandeliers growing richer as it passes through embroidered curtains. They have heard how the merchant princes who occupy these goodly places were once moiling trades- men in sixpenny businesses. Every young Aladdin desires the lamp which is to do such rare things for him. A large number toil on without achieving the desired end ; but many succeed. The Whit- tington who trudges along the dusty road with his cat hears the bells chime when he is made Lord Mayor; and many another ap- prentice who stands in the packed street-crowds as his lordship's procession moves on says to himself in his heart, " Jack, my boy, that's what you have to come to yet." It would seem that where so much trading is to be done as the world now demands every man has a full fair chance, and that fort- une may be won without sacrifices which injure one's manhood and damage one's prospect for happiness at that time when all God's stewards must give an account of their stewardship. Intelligence, large views, system, vigor, and piety, have been well said to be the five points of success. Put a penniless man upon the world with these, and he can gain all he should gain to meet life's great end and obtain life's greatest pleasures. Without intelligence there is success in nothing. Without large views a man's daily toil belittles him. When he lays his plans for great ends upon great outlays, and connects his labors with great principles, and attaches himself to lofty enterprises, and feels in brotherhood with the noble men who in trade have made their lives illustrious, then, whatever may be his em- ployment, he is building himself up while he is building up his busi- ness. He is achieving the greatest heroism, self -conquest. But, however large the plans, unless there be the well-adjusted clock- work of system, the greater the plan the greater the ruin. System is the railroad track, vigor is the locomotive — a power on wheels, a power in control, not a rash, wild fury. This vigor, which is to be 620 CHIPS AND CHUNKS ' the life of things, is found in a right healthy heart. And there must be piety; yes, let us repeat it, there must be piety. Man must have his god, and unless the tradesman devote his heart to the service of Him to whom the gold and the silver and the cattle upon a thousand hills belong he will come at last to worship the image and super- scription upon the coin which passes through his hands so often, and so often represents a power which seems omnipotent in society. Trade-life, in these pressing times, lays us all open to three great dangers. The first is the expectation of too early success. We make haste to be rich. We are not willing to go on the methods which bring legitimate gains. We take by-ways. We invent short plans of ac- complishing that which properly should occupy many years. Our push becomes hurry, and hurry is never healthy. There are dis- eased states of trade. They make some very rich, but they injure general society and they react upon all ; and frequently with most violence upon the richest and most prosperous. Young men peril what capital their fathers can place in their hands, and they peril their health, and they peril their honor. Some come out, and come out rich, but few without injury ; and many are destroyed. Whereas trade conducted legitimately would bring slower gains, but surer gains, and health of body, intellect, and heart, might be preserved. Who would not have his retirement from business postponed a score of years to carry out with fortune what adorns fortune? Another danger is the liability of setting trade out of ethics, or at least of not bringing our moral principles to bear as directly upon every act of buying and selling as we do upon other transactions of society. It is to be feared that there are mechanics, manufacturers, and merchants who are esteemed honorable, and, away from their business, would really scorn to do a mean thing, who hold all the rights of the great human brotherhood as sacred until they go to trade ; and there they have learned to gloss over certain things, to call them by some commercial name which conceals the morale of the act, and thus to beguile themselves into belief of their own honesty and honor, while they daily violate the great laws of reciprocity and benevolence which hold society to its place. It is possible to begin with carelessness of the rights of others in FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 62 1 trade, and to go from this to something worse, perverting our moral vision until we see things in so wrong a light as to glory in our shame. There is no more dangerous doctrine in trade than that the end sanctifies the means, that the splendor of success will attract all eyes, even the eye of conscience and the eye of God, from the dark stains which pollute the robe of golden texture. The present state of public opinion tends to nourish this feeling. The man who kills another is a murderer, but if he slay his thousands he is a praised and pensioned conqueror, and has his place in history. So in trade. The man who cheats, on a small scale, is a swindler and a rogue. Let him do it on a large scale, and he may hold a court in his little palace on some "Avenue." Society must mend in this matter. Each man must bring to his dealing the most scrupulous regard for truth, honor, and justice. No part of trade must be supposed to lie out- side the moral code ; but the decalogue must be as reverently sus- pended in the workshop and the warehouse as in the school and the church. Another great evil is the danger of being betrayed into a false es- timate of money ; into regarding it as an end and not as a means. What is really the difference between the possessor of $100,000 and the owner of $200,000? Manifestly in having at command different amounts of that which can be used to gratify proper desires, culti- vate the home growth of pleasure, and diffuse happiness among one's fellow-men. Beyond so much room to stay in, so much clothing, and so much food, no man can possibly appropriate the money at his command to personal wants. He may surround himself with many new agencies of happiness, he may open fountains which shall go purling down the whole barren waste of time, he may use it to reach beyond the grave, and plant for himself a grove which shall grow rich with leaves and fruits to be ready for him at coming. But suppose neither the one-hundred-thousand nor the two-hundred- thousand-dollar man shall do this, but each shall live as scantily as a beggar, and die with all his money in the vaults, is one richer than the other ? Is not the man who has only ten thousand dollars and uses it so discreetly as to make his little home a nest for hearts, a miniature Paradise, and surrounds himself with many refining agencies and goes forth to gladden friendless hearts, is not such a man richer than 622 CHIPS AND CHUNKS them both? But the world does not think so. The world must educate itself to better views. Money is useful only when used. To labor for the mere accumulation of dollars is as wise as to labor for the mere accumulation of soap-bubbles, and where there is no ulterior end the laborer in each case is a monomaniac. Among the competitors for fortunes how many might succeed if all the men of trade would cultivate themselves for their occupation and train their minds and hearts in settled principles ! And by suc- cess I do not mean, as you will gather from what has just been said, the mere accumulation of a very large fortune. Is it success to com- mence on nothing beyond a determined will, large energy, and a dollar, to end with millions and with every generosity of the heart pressed out by the weight and crowd of effort, with every spark of manliness extinguished under the oft-repeated snows of selfishness, with all respect for humanity and all self-respect gone, with all delicious things gathered about you and every proper and healthy appetite palsy-stricken? Nay, verily. To an ingenuous young ad- venturer there are few discouragements like the sight of a gray- haired millionaire who has no friends but such as are drawn around his old age by money motives, and no relish for the many beautiful and great things at his command. Ye young mechanics and merchants, take warning. It will be a dark day for you when you close up your business, sell out your in- terest, invest your hundreds of thousands, and go home to a large house largely furnished with all the appliances of luxury, if, while you lean back in your cushioned chair to gaze into the cheery grate, the blazing coal shall transform itself into an accusing panorama of the past. There shall rise to your vision the man who, thirty years before, saw your dexterity unrighteously make his money your first capital, and who went the whole range of beggardom down to the last sub- urbs of starvation. And there shall come after him that pale, red- eyed woman whose bleeding fingers wrought through the dreary night for you, and whom you pinched and pinched, while she grew leaner and leaner, and worked less and less, until a cart carried a pine box past your door, with a dead female in it, to some poor Pot- ters' Field, and there was none to look after her two little ones, to FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 623 see that the boy did not commit some outrage upon society and that the girl did not go down the greedy maw of the leviathan of licentiousness. And then you shall see that lad who had a good home in the coun- try, whose widowed mother had prayed over him from his childhood and yielded only to the necessities of the case when she suffered him to come into some subordinate station in your warehouse, and you allowed him merely enough to pay for poor lodgings and poorer food, and you worked him like a dray-horse, and you took no note of that weary homesick look when he bent under your loads, while his eyes were full of the cottage where his sister and his mother dwelt ; and you never went to see him when he was sick, never gave him words of encouragement, but were most exact in deducting from his scant wages for all the days when he could not lift his aching head nor drag his feet to your place of business ; when he lay in fever and in his delirium thought he never should be able to find the place you sent him to, nor carry the package which was too much for his strength, and all day long in his bare garret called for that mother and sister for whom he was generously overtasking his noble but breaking heart — but they could not hear his voice through the tall brick houses of the city and the long green forests that stood be- tween. You cannot endure the steadfast gaze of that young face, so calm, so open, and so full of pain. And then you shall see another sight that will harrow you. A young man who had been your clerk shall be brought before you. You never sought to teach him correct principles. You never warned him. The work, the work — that was all you wanted. And so you held him to the tread-mill till late hours, and then he sought recrea- tion in the ways of vice ; for there was no one to draw him to places of rational amusement, and so from bad to worse he made rapid passage to a felon's doom. What was that to you? You paid him for the work he did. When he became too vicious to do that work without an admonition you set him adrift on the surges of life, and the poor swimmer soon gave out ; but the drowning man cursed you as he sank, and now you see that upturned face of agony in its dread- ful expression of hatred in death. And there is that older clerk, who formed himself on your model, and, without your far-reaching and 624 CHIPS AND CHUNKS self-saving self-love, but having learned your lesson that money is all, was transported by his violent desire of wealth into the crime of for- gery, and in the hour of his disgrace perished by his own hand— and left his broken-hearted wife and his dishonored children the memory of that bloody scene which followed his exposure. Selfish tradesmen, these are the phantoms which are to dance round your gilded chairs, creep over your Brussels carpets, and scream and moan in your tapestried chambers. And is this success— a million in the bank and such horrid memories in your hearts ? Is it worth the moil and toil of a quarter of a century to lay up such treasures for a hard, a deserted, a bitter old age ? It were better for you to be bankrupt in your first years, and slide through unfrequented paths of poverty and peace to a funeral without a pageant and a grave without monumental lies. Let us close with a few words of hearty encouragement to those who are young in trade. There are fixed laws here as in the physical world. Success is not of chance. There are no lucky fellows. The sharpest, wisest, strongest, best men are the luckiest. If you set yourself against every false principle, against every plan of doubtful morality, and shut down your heart against covetousness and an evil eye, if you bend your noble manhood to the work you are in, not as a slave, but to accomplish what you owe yourself and owe your race, you will be lucky enough. You may not grow so rich as sharper men who are worse men — that is, if dollars and cents make riches ; but if an increased nobleness of spirit, if a liberalized head, if a humanized heart, if a ripened manhood, if the respect of those by whom you are surrounded, if the love of the many to whom you have found time to give a helping hand while building up your own fortune, if an un- soiled soul and a fresh spirit be riches for old age, then you shall be rich. There is a merchandise that is better than silver and a gain that is better than fine gold. Having started on your journey to the pacific ocean which bounds the west of this continent of life, your shadow stretches long and dis- mal before you, in all the discouragements which face youthful ardor and enterprise. At mid-day you will achieve success, and the spectral shadow, grown small and feeble, shall be trampled beneath your feet. In the eventide, when you are finishing the day's pilgrimage and fac- FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 62$ ing the sun, your shadow shall fall behind you, long and lengthening like posthumous fame, to mark your pathway for other adventurers and to measure both your stature and your distance. FAITH: IN WALL STREET. A LETTER TO A FRIEND. My DEAR Mr. X.: From the day you began business in Wall Street as broker and banker I have watched your progress and prosperity with most friendly interest. In business you are " a success." Your probity, perseverance and penetration have enabled you to create a most profitable constituency. And yet you are not a Christian. This pains and puzzles me. It pains me because I know how much is lost out of your life. It puzzles me because it shows some moral or intellectual dislocation in a man whom many have trusted so much that he could have wrought their financial ruin — a man of such grasp of ideas as to have been able to grow a great tree of fortune from a little acorn of capital. Now, how is this ? Let us try to get at the real cause of this state of things. In this letter let me suggest one difficulty. It seems to me to lie in a great mistake you make in regard to faith. This I gather from our conversations. You have probably been led into this error by definitions of faith which you have heard or read. It seems strange that we try to define faith. It is wholly unnecessary, and some of the definitions are, therefore, very absurd. If you go to dictionaries or theologic treatises you are told that faith is be- lief, and belief is trust, and trust is faith. That is all any man gets out of the books. And why? Because of the intellectual impossi- bility of defining to any man what every man and eveiy child knows. It is a fact that there is no child old enough to comprehend any definition who does not know, and has not for years known, what faith is, as well as faith is known by any professor in any theological seminary. So I shall not attempt to define " faith " or " trust." If you do not now thoroughly know what is meant by each word all the men and all the angels in earth and heaven could not make you under- 626 CHIPS AND CHUNKS stand it. But it may be that you have the idea — many have — that religious " faith," or gospel " trust," is something different from the faith and trust of every-day life. That is a grave mistake. Faith is faith. While there are many degrees of faith there are no two kinds of faith. Then, again, you may have confounded " faith " and "trust." That is often done, especially in matters of religion. Now, all I ask you is simply to apply to religion the common sense you have applied to finance. If you do I am sure you will become a thoroughly honest and active Christian. It seems to me that in nine cases out of ten, where men have thought on the subject and failed to become Christians, the difficulty has been that they have seemed to feel that there was something unnatural, unreasonable, weird, mystic, unearthly, in religious " faith " and " trust." If so, all faith and trust are of that character. No; Wall Street "faith " and Wall" Street "trust" are faith and trust good enough for this world and the next. It is the faith which men of science have. It is the faith which mariners have. It is the faith which theologians have, and it is the trust which lovers, children, merchants, and bankers have. The only difference is in the objects. There is faith in the uniformity of nature among scientists; in the truths revealed in the Bible among religionists; in the laws of mind among philosophers ; in the laws of trade among merchants and bankers ; one and the same faith, many and various objects. Observe that trust is a distinct thing. You have faith in principles, in abstractions ; you have trust in persons or things. You have, in certain theories of the laws of mechanics, so much faith, for instance, that you would expend $20,000 in the building of a bridge in a certain way ; you have never trusted that bridge until you have gone over it yourself or sent your family over in the carriage, or at least sent over your laden wagons and your valua- ble teams. You have " faith " in the laws of trade, but you " trust " certain customers. You even have " faith " in some customers you will not " trust." You know certain men whom you believe to be good, true, honest, and even honorable, whom you would not " trust " with ten thousand dollars because you believe that they lack the financial ability to carry out successfully the plans they have designed. Plainly, now, there must be faith before there can be trust, and FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 627 just as plainly there may be faith and no trust. In other words, faith is indispensable to trust, but may exist without it. Many a man believes in Jesus who does not trust him. The appeal every- where in the New Testament is to trust our souls for salvation to our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in Him — not assent to any theory, hypothesis, or doctrine about him — must, of course, precede trust. But it is valueless if trust do not follow. Now, how is it in Wall Street ? You know that business would come to an end if faith in certain principles did not lead men to trust one another. A panic is the result of sudden or wide-spread withdrawal of trust. Without trust in one another how are men to conduct business? You know that you have purchased and sold millions in " securities " you never saw. What does that mean ? Simply trust upon your part, upon the part of those who sold to you, and on the part of those who bought of you. Every day your customers from a great distance order hundreds of thousands of shares of stock. They first trust you with their money. They trust you with their stock. They have faith in your word that you have bought it, and then, again, they trust you with their money because they have faith in your integrity as an integral part of you, and they believe that you have sold the stock. They know how much they had on deposit at the beginning of the transaction ; to that they add the profits you report, but which they have never seen ; on the total balance they draw a dozen drafts ; their customers have such faith and trust that they indorse these drafts over to other customers; and so, on a block of stock, believed to represent a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, business to the amount of many millions of dollars is transacted by hundreds of people who have never seen the dollars, nor even the script representing the dollars. How many boys and men you have trusted with piles of money ! You must trust. We are all so interdependent that no man can live without trusting others. When a man on Wall Street, or in relig- ious societies, does what shocks trust we resent it vehemently. We feel that he has done much more harm than the mere abstrac- tion of valuables. The valuables are somewhere. He has done the additional grievous Avrong of destroying a portion of men's confi- dence in one another. 628 CHIPS AND CHUNKS I cannot fail to see how largely you have trusted me, and trusted others because you knew that I had trusted them. You have, doubtless, done the same in hundreds of other cases. Indeed, otherwise no business could be built up. Now, I really think that if you had as much faith in the truths of the Gospel as you have in the truths of commerce, and if you trusted our Lord Jesus Christ as much as you trust even me, you would begin a spiritual business which would be as successful as your banking business, and forever infinitely more valuable. If you do not trust Him can you explain to yourself why. LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION. One of the most perplexing things in business and in "society" is this matter of soliciting, giving, and receiving of letters of intro- duction and letters of commendation. When properly given and used they are evidently very helpful, as lubricating the wheels of social intercourse. That their usefulness may be maintained all parties concerned should have clear conception of their function. The first use is to make two persons acquainted with each other. There are two reasons for my knowing another man : the lower is that I may get something from him, the higher that I might give something to him. There are many ways in which two persons be- come acquainted ; the most of them casual, or, as religious persons might say, providential. But sometimes the acquaintance is brought about by the intervention of a third party. Now, the greatest moral responsibility is upon this third party. Even when people meet in crowds, in public conveyances or on the street, the man who makes two persons know each other ought to do so with deliberation. It seems now well settled among well-bred people that if a man is walking on the street with his friend and meets another friend he is not obliged by etiquette to make them acquainted. He does not know but that good and solid reasons are known to one or the other why neither should have the responsibility of a speaking acquaint- ance with the other, and as they meet under circumstances which preclude inquiry into their wishes it is best to forbear. One of the FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 62g most important judicial acts of a man's life is when he determines that it is best to make two men acquainted. The frequency with which this judicial act is performed, if per- formed thoughtfully, at last makes it easy. When two gentlemen come together in your office, and you know that they are of the same social class, and their characteristics are such as would make an ac- quaintance probably agreeable and profitable, you may venture to present them to each other; but they must both be so much your personal friends that you dare take what is really a liberty with both. But should you not be careful not to present a younger to an older man, a very poor man to a very rich man, a very inferior to a very superior person, a gentleman to a lady, without in each case the con- sent of the latter? The morality of the answer to that lies on the surface : the greater responsibility is on the superior person. The favor is to the inferior, so he need not be asked ; the burden is to be laid on the superior, and he or she has a right to be consulted. In the presence and hearing of the superior the inferior ought in no case to ask for an introduction, because it places two persons in a very awkward and perhaps painful position. A knows that B is very well acquainted with C. He says, " Now, B, if we should ever meet C be sure not to introduce us ; I have reasons for avoiding his acquaintance." The next day they are walking together and meet C, who abruptly says, " Mr. B, I wish you would introduce me to Mr. A." What is to be done in such a case ? What an em- barrassment ! But the acknowledged superior may ask to have an inferior pre- sented to him. It is an act of grace. It is asking no favor ; it is a bestowal. When we come to letters of introduction the same principles apply with increased force, because writing a letter is a more deliberate thing, a more impressive thing, a more permanent thing. Moreover, there may be reasons why the person to whom application is made for a letter of introduction should not furnish it ; these reasons would justify him in declining, and satisfy the person refused, but, being a gentleman, he cannot communicate them. The refused per- son is left to conjecture that the ground of refusal is in himself, and he is unhappy and has unpleasant feelings toward the refuser. 40 630 CHIPS AND CHUNKS In this whole matter there are some things that are plain and others that are not. What not to do seems plain : First. I ought not to ask a letter of introduction from any person to any other person until I have ascertained that it will be agreeable to the one to give and the other to receive. " But this is not an easy thing." True, but it is I that want the letter; the giver has not solicited me to take it, nor has the person addressed solicited me to present it. If the letter will not pay me for going to the pains of securing it properly I should do without it. Second. Under no circumstance ought I ask a letter from a per- son who does not know me, my character, my position, my ante- cedents. From a person to whom one must carry a letter of intro- duction one should not ask a letter of introduction ; this would seem too nearly an axiom to need statement, and yet almost every week the writer of these paragraphs has solicitations from strangers to give them letters of introduction to very prominent citizens, and sometimes even to ladies of social distinction. Among friends it is sufficient for one to announce that he is going to spend some time in a certain place ; then his friends should think to whom they may present him. Letters of introduction should be proffered ', not solicited. Between you and a certain friend in London there may exist such a state of knowledge and intercourse as may preclude you from giving letters of presentation, but there are others to whom you may properly send the traveler ; give him, without his asking, letters to those. Most of the embarrassment of this whole subject would be relieved if society tacitly acted upon the rule that no letter of introduction to any special individual is ever to be sought ; that a friend should proffer his friend a note of presentation whenever he judges that an acquaintance would be agreeable to both parties ; and that no account is expected of the use of such letter, so that the receiver may feel at perfect liberty to use it at his own discretion. FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 63 1 THE EX-CONVICT. AN ARTICLE FOR THE YET UNCONVICTED. Perhaps all pastors of churches are called upon to deal with men who have been in prison and have served out their terms or other- wise got themselves discharged. There was a time in my pastoral experience when this phase of human life was not only unknown to me, but never thought of. I can recall my sensations when I was first interviewed as a pastor by a man who had been in prison. So now I can feel how little interest there will be awakened in the minds of thousands of readers by the title at the head of this article. But I want this article read. It is not always to be taken for granted that a man who has been in prison is so much worse than all the men who have never been arrested, convicted, and incarcerated, as to make a distinct class of human beings. This is wholly untrue. Take all the men in Sing Sing — New York State prison — and make an accurate rating of their total criminality, and it may be safely affirmed that probably there is more total criminality in the same number of men walking free in the city of New York, doing business, attending theaters and churches and mingling in social circles, than in that incarcerated crowd. This may startle minds that have never studied these questions, but a little reflection will show how it may be. The number of solitary criminals is. small, and the crimes they commit are of the smaller offenses. " Heavy jobs " require many hands. There are confederates in crime. When several men unite to commit a crime and are taken in the act it is the younger, weaker, least experienced, that are caught. The other birds are too old to have salt put on their tails. If careful examination were made I think it would be found that a majority of convicts have partners in crime still going free, while they are more criminal than the convicts. Then it is to be remembered that there are men convicted on a technicality ; who have meant no crime, but who have fallen under the weight of the legal maxim which teaches us that " ignorance of the law does not excuse." There are those who commit a misde- meanor under the influence of liquor ; and while this should not set 6$2 CHIPS AND CHUNKS aside the sentence, because it was wrong to put themselves in that condition of peril, still that fact keeps us from placing these convicts in the class of those who deliberately, and in the use of their facul- ties, plan and execute a felony. The intoxicated man who steals is not nearly so great a scoundrel as the sober grog-seller who sold him the poison. But, whether any convict deserved the prison or not, whether he stood in any greater or less criminality before God, the fact that a man has been imprisoned under legal sentence is a fact in the con- vicf s history. Of this fact two things may be said : (i) It can never be taken out of his history. (2) If he calculated the costs of detection it is highly probable that he did not take this factor into account. He probably simply calculated the loss of time in prison and the dis- comfort he should endure therein. He did not calculate how, for- ever thereafter, the fact that he had been aconvict would remain in his history and affect his subsequent career. It is desirable to call at- tention pointedly to this. A man who has been a convict never gets it out of his own conscious- ness. When the fact is known to others they never get it out of their consciousness. His relation to society is changed forever. This is a tenfold greater punishment than imprisonment with hard labor " on bread and water." These pass away with time ; that never. This fact ought to make the officers of justice extremely careful how they bring men into this position. Carelessness in courts will increase criminals. And it ought to make all men, es- pecially all young men, exceedingly careful how they allow them- selves to be " mixed up " with what may bring them under that branding-iron which makes the ineffaceable mark. The latest ex-convict of my acquaintance interviewed me the other day. What was I to do for him ? I could not recommend him for any employment. He had been convicted for doing, while intoxicated, a technically illegal thing, by which no one had suffered pecuniary loss ; he had injured no one, but he had been in prison. That was his story. It might have been false ; it might have been true. What should I have done? This is what I did : what do you think of it? FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 633 I advised him to go at once to his former employers, a large com- mercial house, at whose instance he had been convicted ; to tell them the whole truth of any wrong he had done, stated in the strongest way in which truth would allow him to put it ; to call their attention to the fact that it was impossible for him to secure a position in which to make an honest living so long as he could not refer to his latest employers ; that it was in their power to give him another chance ; that if they did not they would be prolonging the punishment of a man who had paid the legal penalty of his wrong- doing — a thing which he should not suppose was their desire ; that he had taken this course on the advice of the pastor of the Church of the Strangers, who had promised to wait on them, if they desired to see him, and confirm the statement. Did I do right ? Whenever an employe becomes a convict is the responsibility of his Christian employer vacated ? If each such employer gave the man, when convicted, permission to call on him on the expiration of his prison term might not many be saved who are now lost ? P. S. — Since this was written the ex-convict took my advice, and his old firm have given him employment. JUSTICE IN BUSINESS. Justice goes a great way beyond the mere payment of debts ; it is a stern and strict regard for what God has given to every man and a punctilious meeting of all claims upon us made in virtue of our own humanity and the humanity of the claimants. A man's happiness depends upon his character, his reputation, and his property. A wanton diminishing of any of these is a sin of injustice. When a boy hears your profanity or obscenity, and has his soul tainted and his character injured, you have done him injustice. When your clerk sees you carry through to apparent success a plan which is wicked, so that he is encouraged in straying from integrity, you have done him injustice. When a suspicion against a man is nursed by your gossiping tongue or slanderous transmission you 634 CHIPS AND CHUNKS have done the man injustice. You had no right to weaken him in society, just as you have no right to take money or other material property which belongs to him. Any act upon your part, not com- pelled by duty, which takes from a man the power of being good and doing good, is injustice. A man's reputation must be as sacred in your eyes as his property. And yet there are men so honest in all questions capable of being put in the shape of dollars and cents, so determined to have their own money and give every other man his money, that, if they have received one cent too much in payment, will walk two miles to pay it back to the meanest man that ever traded with them, or walk two miles to collect the one cent still due them on settlement ; there are men in whose hands you may leave your accounts and your money with perfect security, who would starve to death before they would even " borrow " your funds without your consent, and if you die they will render the last fraction to your heirs ; but these same men will meet in the social circle and repeat stories they have heard to your disadvantage, and, because they did not invent them, feel that they have done you no injustice. Re- member that there are a thousand claims which our fellow-men have upon us which cannot be reduced to a money formula. The evil effect of a mercantile life is that it makes, to the merchant, every thing seem indifferent which is not capable of a pecuniary repre- sentation. And you, who are merchants of my congregation, must guard against that evil. You have not fulfilled the whole law of justice when you have collected no more than your dues and paid your debts to the last cent. There are claims of honor, of relation- ship, of courtesy, of society, upon every one of us, just as binding as any pecuniary obligation. Do you call that man just who would sell his coat from his back and his shoes from his feet to pay the last cent of a gambling debt he made last week at the races, but, night after night, lets his wife wait for him till the small hours, and gives his children no paternal example and- instruction in righteous- ness? I do not. Nor do I call that man just who is so con- scientious that he puts his goods as near the front windows as possible that his customers may make no mistake in selections, and tells them every defect in every case, but grinds his clerks to the lowest point of salary that will keep them, drives the beggar from FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 635 his door, suspects every man of being a rogue until he finds he is honest, and is so intent upon being rich that he does not see his children out of their beds except on Sunday mornings, and does not visit his aged mother once in five years. When the judgment throne shall be set and " the books shall be opened " you will find that there are other books besides day-books, journals, and ledgers. RELIGION AND BUSINESS. Christianity does not interfere destructively with men's business, but comes in to ennoble and prosper it. It is not true that one must retire from the world to be good. A merchant, a mechanic, an engineer, a lawyer, in full business may be just as saintly as a monk can be. Christianity that interferes gently yet powerfully and healthfully with all things has much to do with trade and business. There is not one system of morals for the market and another for the temple. A man is to be just as honest and earnest and pure in selling a yard of cloth or a pound of sugar as if he were delivering a truth from a pulpit. It is as cer- tainly a mistake to neglect your business for your religion as to neg- lect your religion for your business. He has erroneous views of both who supposes that any legitimate demand of either interferes with any proper demand of the other. The Gospel recognizes bus- iness, trade, buying, and selling, as among the lawful and disciplinary employments of men. It does not teach that we are to shut up our shops and abandon our tools or merchandise. The necessity of exertion is laid upon us, and the heavenly Father has made it a blessing. We must not make it a curse. And such it is when it absorbs and controls our affections, or when it is allowed to inter- fere with the proper discharge of our pious duties to God or our relative duties to man. In the 1 2th of Romans St. Paul puts it in this shape: "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord ; " from which it is apparent that he did not consider diligence in business as inter- fering with fervor of spirit, nor spiritual devotion as antagonistic to secular pursuits. It must be a point with you to demonstrate that 636 CHIPS AND CHUNKS your business is your religion and your religion your business ; that one is the body and the other the soul of your life, and that these twain are really not twain, but one, so intermingling that no one can say, " here his religion begins, there it ends ; here his business be- gins, there it ends." Your religion must be to your whole life, not as the Gulf Stream to the Atlantic — that daintily gathers in its blue robe so that, if possible, it may not touch the darker garment of the common sea — but as the salt to the ocean ; present in each drop of the water, changing the whole character of all the vast ocean, giving its ponderous masses circulation and life, and yet making no increase in bulk. "Buy;" yes, buy! But when you have bought "be as though you possessed not." Go into the markets, put in your money, your brains, your strength, and your time. Buy and sell and get gain. It is more manly than to be counting beads in a monastery. Young merchants have their lives of buying and selling, of gaining and losing, before them. We should not call them off because there are dangers there. We should not dissuade men from commerce and travel because of the perils of the sea. But we should insist upon a good ship and compass and chart. Lay down for yourselves, my readers, this simple rule of morals : that a man who trades on the time, the intellect, or capital at his command, as if it were his own, intending to devote the fortunate results thereof to himself, is, in his heart of hearts, a dishonest man. You would consider him so if you were principal and he agent ; if you had given him the whole capital to be used in a certain manner for ends that were yours, he to receive merely what you and he had agreed to be handsome wages. Any assumption upon his part that he owned the money and was to appropriate the profits would lead to a withdrawal of the capital and the confidence at once. Have you behaved so toward God ? Do you speak of what belongs to your Maker in the language of appropriation, saying, " my store, my plantation, my stocks, my money, my houses?" And are the uses of all these things confined to yourself in fancy and in fact? If so, you are a dishonest man. You would just as soon appropriate what your neighbor claims to be his if you were sure of no detec- tion or even of no penalty. Let us be heartily ashamed of ourselves, FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 637 all of us. We are agents, not principals ; what we use belongs to another, not to us. We must show our books to God. When a man uses the property of his lord as if it were his own, entertain- ing himself and others upon the property of another as if he pos- sessed it in his own right, God does not say to him simply, " Thou fool ! " as to the man in the Gospel, but he says, " Thou cheat, thou sneak, thou thief! " Let two young men begin business with equal abilities and cap- ital, the one on the plan of selfishness and the other upon the plan of morality ; the one buying and using what he had purchased as if he were the supreme judge and there were no responsibility to another; the other buying and acting as if he possessed not, and as if all belonged to God, as it really does. With the same abilities and capital their prospects of success and their perils of failure seem naturally equal. But the former is sustained by no high sense of responsibility ; the latter is. The former has no consecration to his prosperity, the latter has ; the former sinks his profits in his little self, the latter lays up treasure in heaven. When the former fails in business he is ruined ; all his expectations are blasted ; all the intent of his labor fails. When the same mercantile accident befalls the latter he has the whole moral result of success ; he has done what he started to do — namely, to please God — and God has transferred the capital for a season to the charge of another. He has no complaints. I beseech you not to break the power and the pleasure of business by conducting it on the basis of selfishness! AFTER BUSINESS. Business ought not to be restful. A true man of business works his brain almost incessantly during business hours. There are very few employments in which it is smooth sailing all the day long. Business has its trouble, its anxieties, its careful watchings. A busi- ness man is on the strain all day to keep things right behind him, sound under him, and opening before him. He has to contend with opposition and competition. There are men lying in wait to deceive and ensnare him. He has to put his 638 CHIPS AND CHUNKS whole mind to his business. There must be no diversion. He must be wholly in his affairs if he is to be a successful business man. His home is that from which he goes to his work and that to which he returns from his work. It is very important that a man shall enter upon the morning serene. To that end all about his house ought to be quiet and sweet. Wife and children and servants ought to study his physical and mental needs. He should go down from his doorsteps crowned with so many benedictions that he shall long for the hour which will allow him to return. Then there will be to him nothing behind in the way of bitter memories, and noth- ing before in the way of harassing anticipations, to break the full power which he shall bring to his work. Business over, he should lock up his door behind him and go home to be at home. The jaded toiler ought to enter a balmy atmosphere. The gentle wife, the loving children, the trained servants, should give to his resting-place a charm which makes him forget his cares, his anxieties, and his ''bull" and "bear" fights down on the Ex- change. All these deliciously soothing attentions should come spontane- ously. In his home the business man must not be exacting. Per- haps the wife has had a day of trial. It's not always easy to man- age domestic affairs. Servants are not always angels that, having lost their wings in heaven, have come down to human kitchens. The children don't always feel well, and they sometimes torment their mother and their mother torments them. But each partner in the domestic establishment should, as far as possible, keep annoy- ing details from the other partner — the wife from the husband, and the husband from the wife. The business man, young or old, after business hours, ought not to " talk shop." Reading, music, conversa- tion, rollicking plays, religious devotions in the season thereof — these should fill up the hours after business. The man of business should not repel his children because he is tired or because he wants to think. He has no right to be thinking about his business after the hours. Let the children climb over him. Let them fetch him down on all fours ; let them straddle him ; let them chase him around the chairs. Let them be gladder to have their father come home than to have an angel out of heaven drop down in their midst. It FOR EVERY FIRESIDE. 639 will not only be better for the children, and the wife, and the whole domestic circle, but in an especial manner it will be better for the business man himself. He will go back to his work fresher, stronger, and like a giant. But if the business man be so unfortunate as to have no home- circle let him be careful in regard to one thing — namely, that he abstain from all studies connected with his business. If he be en- gaged during the day in finance, don't let him read the newspapers in those portions where they give an account of stocks. Let him fre- quent no business club; but if he must go to a club let it be one of artists, or of men engaged in any ether business but his own. Let him set himself systematically to give a certain number of hours before sleep to the study of some subject as remote as possible from that which engages his attention in business hours. Sunday comes after business ; after all the business days of a week. Sunday ought to be a day of mental as well as spiritual repose. It is not a day on which to read hard books on theology. Even the clergyman must abandon his studies on that day. We must have repose and quiet and refreshment. That is the reason why even intellectual men, when they go to church, don't wish to hear great sermons. " Great sermons " are a delusion and snare. Men ought not to pursue a long course of hard thinking on Sunday. Business men can employ their nights reading treatises on theology and metaphysics, and this would do them good. But after all the strain of the week it is a mistake to ask intellectual men to listen to long arguments. They want that which will quicken the moral sense while it soothes the tired spirit ; which will lessen the cares of the world and heart and put wind under the tired spirit to lift it up. It is wise to learn the uses and adjustment of things. It is not always " in business ; " sometimes it is " after business." But in busi- ness we should do that, and only that, which will make the employ- ment of " after business " sweet ; and the employments of " after business" should be such as shall make the hours " in business" as sweet and refreshing as they are powerful and productive. LIFE'S MYSTIC VOLUME 4f O PEN before ray wondering eyes, Great God, life's mystic volume lies ; 1 I wait to see thy hand define The fadeless record of each line. No leaf once closed may I retrace To add a word, or word erase ; Nor may I guess the joy or gloom Inscribed on pages yet to come. The past in light I clearly count : Judge the intent, tell the amount ; But hid in clouds I cannot see The history yet awaiting me. Yet knowing this, that, great or small, My Father's hand will write it all, I trust the future, and submit To what is past, — what's writ is writ. But hear this prayer, O Power Divine ! That lift'st each leaf, and writ'st each line That where my hands have left a stain Christ's blood may make all pure again ; Where the last sentence hath its end, In mercy, Maker, Father, Friend, Write, for the sake of thy dear Son, " Servant of Jesus Christ, well done ! " jLZ />-y~*F $■ 4r <<5 A. ^ °x. . V ^ v * W ^ A