Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
remembered by those who partake this festival! if they dared not attend
the public jubilee till private retrospect of the past year had been
taken in the spirit of the old rhyme, which we all bear in mind if not
in heart,--
"What hast thou done that's worth the doing,
And what pursued that's worth pursuing?
What sought thou knew'st that thou shouldst shun,
What done thou shouldst have left undone?"
A crusade needs also to be made this day into the wild places of each
heart, taking for its device, "Lord, cleanse thou me from secret faults;
keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins." Would not that
circle be happy as if music, from invisible agents, floated through it
if each member of it considered every other member as a bequest from
heaven; if he supposed that the appointed nearness in blood or lot was
a sign to him that he must exercise his gifts of every kind as given
peculiarly in their behalf; that if richer in temper, in talents, in
knowledge, or in worldly goods, here was the innermost circle of his
poor; that he must clothe these naked, whether in body or mind, soothing
the perverse, casting light into the narrow chamber, or, most welcome
task of all! extending a hand at the right moment to one uncertain of
his way? It is this spirit that makes the old man to be revered as a
Nestor, rather than put aside like a worn-out garment. It is such a
spirit that sometimes has given to the young child a ministry as of a
parent in the house.
But, if charity begin at home, it must not end there; and, while
purifying the innermost circle, let us not forget that it depends upon
the great circle, and that again on it; that no home can be healthful in
which are not cherished seeds of good for the world at large. Thy child,
thy brother, are given to thee only as an example of what is due from
thee to all men. It is true that, if you, in anger, call your brother
fool, no deeds of so-called philanthropy shall save you from the
punishment; for your philanthropy must be from the love of excitement,
not the love of man, or of goodness. But then you must visit the
Gentiles also, and take time for knowing what aid the woman of Samaria
may need.
A noble Catholic writer, in the true sense as well as by name a
Catholic, describes a tailor as giving a dinner on an occasion which had
brought honor to his house, which, though a humble, was not a poor
house. In his glee, the tailor was boasting a little of the favors and
blessings of his lot, when suddenly a thought stung him. He stopped, and
cutting away half the fowl that lay before him, sent it in a dish with
the best knives, bread, and napkin, and a brotherly message that was
better still, to a widow near, who must, he knew, be sitting in sadness
and poverty among her children. His little daughter was the messenger.
If parents followed up the indulgences heaped upon their children at
Thanksgiving dinners with similar messages, there would not be danger
that children should think enjoyment of sensual pleasures the only
occasion that demands Thanksgiving.
And suppose, while the children were absent on their errands of justice,
as they could not fail to think them, if they compared the hovels they
must visit with their own comfortable homes, their elders, touched by a
sense of right, should be led from discussion of the rivalries of trade
or fashion to inquiry whether they could not impart of all that was
theirs, not merely one poor dinner once a year, but all their mental and
material wealth for the benefit of all men. If they do not sell it _all_
at once, as the rich young man was bid to do as a test of his sincerity,
they may find some way in which it could be invested so as to show
enough obedience to the law and the prophets to love our neighbor as
ourselves.
And he who once gives himself to such thoughts will find it is not
merely moral gain for which he shall return thanks another year with the
return of this day. In the present complex state of human affairs, you
cannot be kind unless you are wise. Thoughts of amaranthine bloom will
spring up in the fields ploughed to give food to suffering men. It
would, indeed, seem to be a simple matter at first glance. "Lovest thou
me?"--"Feed my lambs." But now we have not only to find pasture, but to
detect the lambs under the disguise of wolves, and restore them by a
spell, like that the shepherd used, to their natural form and whiteness.
And for this present day appointed for Thanksgiving, we may say that if
we know of so many wrongs, woes, and errors in the world yet
unredressed; if in this nation recent decisions have shown a want of
moral discrimination in important subjects, that make us pause and doubt
whether we can join in the formal congratulations that we are still
bodily alive, unassailed by the ruder modes of warfare, and enriched
with the fatness of the land; yet, on the other side, we know of causes
not so loudly proclaimed why we should give thanks. Abundantly and
humbly we must render them for the movement, now sensible in the heart
of the civilized world, although it has not pervaded the entire
frame--for that movement of contrition and love which forbids men of
earnest thought to eat, drink, or be merry while other men are steeped
in ignorance, corruption, and woe; which calls the king from his throne
of gold, and the poet from his throne of mind, to lie with the beggar in
the kennel, or raise him from it; which says to the poet, "You must
reform rather than create a world," and to him of the golden crown, "You
cannot long remain a king unless you are also a man."
Wherever this impulse of social or political reform darts up its rill
through the crusts of selfishness, scoff and dread also arise, and hang
like a heavy mist above it. But the voice of the rill penetrates far
enough for those who have ears to hear. And sometimes it is the case
that "those who came to scoff remain to pray." In two articles of
reviews, one foreign and one domestic, which have come under our eye
within the last fortnight, the writers who began by jeering at the
visionaries, seemed, as they wrote, to be touched by a sense that
without a high and pure faith none can have the only true vision of the
intention of God as to the destiny of man.
We recognized as a happy omen that there is cause for thanksgiving, and
that our people may be better than they seem, the recent meeting to
organize an association for the benefit of prisoners. We are not, then,
wholly Pharisees. We shall not ask the blessing of this day in the mood
of, "Lord, I thank thee that I, and my son, and my brother, are not as
other men are,--not as those publicans imprisoned there," while the
still small voice cannot make us hear its evidence that, but for
instruction, example, and the "preventing God," every sin that can be
named might riot in our hearts. The prisoner, too, may become a man.
Neither his open nor our secret fault must utterly dismay us. We will
treat him as if he had a soul. We will not dare to hunt him into a
beast of prey, or trample him into a serpent. We will give him some
crumbs from the table which grace from above and parental love below
have spread for us, and perhaps he will recover from these ghastly
ulcers that deform him now.
We were much pleased with the spirit of the meeting for the benefit of
prisoners, to which we have just alluded. It was simple, business-like,
in a serious, affectionate temper. The speakers did not make phrases or
compliments--did not slur over the truth. The audience showed a ready
vibration to the touch of just and tender feeling. The time was
evidently ripe for this movement. We doubt not that many now darkened
souls will give thanks for the ray of light that will have been let in
by this time next year. It is but a grain of mustard seed, but the
promised tree will grow swiftly if tended in a pure spirit; and the
influence of good measures in any one place will be immediate in this
province, as has been the case with every attempt in behalf of another
sorrowing class, the insane.
While reading a notice of a successful attempt to have musical
performances carried through in concert by the insane at Rouen, we were
forcibly reminded of a similar performance we heard a few weeks ago at
Sing Sing. There the female prisoners joined in singing a hymn, or
rather choral, which describes the last thoughts of a spirit about to be
enfranchised from the body; each stanza of which ends with the words,
"All is well;" and they sang it--those suffering, degraded children of
society--with as gentle and resigned an expression as if they were sure
of going to sleep in the arms of a pure mother. The good spirit that
dwelt in the music made them its own. And shall not the good spirit of
religious sympathy make them its own also, and more permanently? We
shall see. Should the _morally_ insane, by wise and gentle care, be won
back to health, as the wretched bedlamites have been, will not the
angels themselves give thanks? And will any man dare take the risk of
opposing plans that afford even a chance of such a result?
Apart also from good that is public and many-voiced, does not each of us
know, in private experience, much to be thankful for? Not only the
innocent and daily pleasures that we have prized according to our
wisdom; of the sun and starry skies, the fields of green, or snow
scarcely less beautiful, the loaf eaten with an appetite, the glow of
labor, the gentle signs of common affection; but have not some, have not
many of us, cause to be thankful for enfranchisement from error or
infatuation; a growth in knowledge of outward things, and instruction
within the soul from a higher source. Have we not acquired a sense of
more refined enjoyments; clear convictions; sometimes a serenity in
which, as in the first days of June, all things grow, and the blossom
gives place to fruit? Have we not been weaned from what was unfit for
us, or unworthy our care? and have not those ties been drawn more close,
and are not those objects seen more distinctly, which shall forever be
worthy the purest desires of our souls? Have we learned to do any thing,
the humblest, in the service and by the spirit of the power which
meaneth all things well? If so, we may give thanks, and, perhaps,
venture to offer our solicitations in behalf of those as yet less
favored by circumstances. When even a few shall dare do so with the
whole heart--for only a pure heart, can "avail much" in such
prayers--then ALL shall soon be well.
CHRISTMAS.
Our festivals come rather too near together, since we have so few of
them; thanksgiving, Christmas, new year's day,--and then none again till
July. We know not but these four, with the addition of "a day set apart
for fasting and prayer," might answer the purposes of rest and
edification, as well as a calendar full of saints' days, if they were
observed in a better spirit. But thanksgiving is devoted to good
dinners; Christmas and new year's days, to making presents and
compliments; fast day, to playing at cricket and other games; and the
fourth of July, to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to
deserve its benefits and secure its fruits.
We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one
side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so slippery
and indolent a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem the
time. Time flows on steadily, whether he regards it or not; yet unless
_he keep time_, there is no music in that flow. The sands drop with
inevitable speed, yet each waits long enough to receive, if it be ready,
the intellectual touch that should turn it to a sand of gold.
Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power; Power is the
father of Genius and Wisdom; Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest