The new biography of Benedict Arnold tells us of the despair of the traitor's final days, the remorse that gnawed his heart, the agony that filled his life. Yet no arbitrary degree was imposed upon Arnold. He plotted the surrender of the interests committed to him as a general, planned the stratagem that ended in the capture and execution of Andre, and received $30,000 in gold for his treachery. Having gone over to the enemy, he placed himself at the head of a band of English troops and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and, dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall he also reap is the law of nature and of God.

The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a "hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old, Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother's absence, Jacob used the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and, simulating the brother's voice, he extorted from his dying father those tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to his father's title, wealth and power. Full twoscore years passed swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns to crafty Jacob.

But silently nature was working out the harvest of retribution, through that law of heredity that makes sons repeat the qualities of their father. When Jacob was now advanced in years his ten sons began, to develop craftiness, and soon they plowed great furrows of care in the father's face. In those days of care his young son Joseph stole into Jacob's heart like a sweet sunbeam, and, with his open, loving ways, filled his father's heart with gladness. When the elder brothers knew Jacob had given Joseph a coat of many colors they remembered the craft of their father in his early career. One evening, when the herds and flocks were scattered widely over the hills, Simeon sent out messengers and called his brothers together for a conference. In that hour he said: "Wist ye not how our father, being a younger son, supplanted his elder brother, Esau? And behold his craft will now make his younger child, Joseph, to supplant his elder brothers! Do ye not remember how our father, Jacob, took a kid and made his hands like unto the hands of Esau? Let us now take a kid and make its blood represent the blood and death of Joseph. What Jacob did for his father, Isaac, let his sons do to their father, Jacob." Thus, with subtle irony, nature made the man's sins to come back to him. A boy, Jacob deceived his father, now, grown gray and old, his boys brought their father an armful of deceits. In that hour when Reuben and Simeon held up the coat of many colors, all red with blood, great nature might have whispered to Jacob: "It is the blood of the kid that you slew for deceiving your father returning to enable your sons to deceive you." For, having sowed deceit, deceit also and stratagem Jacob reaped. Himself a son, he thrust a dart into his father's heart. Become a father, his ten sons became archers, skilled with darts that filled their father's heart with agony. For nature loves justice; her rule is law, sometimes her rod is iron.

The principle that every deed is a seed that contains the germ of its own reward or punishment has received full interpretation by the poets and dramatists. In his "Paradise Lost," Milton has made a detailed study of the principles of the spiritual harvests. The poet represents Satan as an angel, fallen indeed, and sadly battered by his fall, yet still an archangel glorious for strength and beauty. Having visited Paradise and accomplished the destruction of Eve's innocence and Adam's happiness, Satan returns home, passing over a bridge of more prodigious length than now arches the gulf between earth and hell. When the prince arrived at Pandemonium, the capital of Lucifer's realm, he found that the leaders of the fallen host had arranged a reception in the great banquet-hall of the palace. In the presence of the applauding throng, the prince told the story of how he had succeeded in opening the earth as a place to which these exiled angels might retreat from the prison in which they had been so long confined, and pointed to the great bridge spanning the abyss 'twixt earth and hell. When the loud cheerings and rejoicings over this fact had ceased, Satan told by what stratagem he had succeeded in inducing man to break friendship with God. It was not by disguising himself as an angel of light. But, affirmed Satan, man cared so little for the laws of God that, although disguised as a serpent, he induced man to sin.

"Then awhile Satan stood, expecting their universal shout and high applause To fill his ear, when contrary he hears On all sides from innumerable tongues A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long Had leisure. Wondering at himself no more, His visage drawn, he felt; too sharp and spare His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining Each the other, till supplanted down he fell, A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, Reluctant, but in vain. A greater power Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned, According to his doom."

Also when Satan attempted to speak, Milton says, only a hiss went forth "from forked tongue to forked tongue." When many days had passed by and their hunger was very sore because these fallen angels had seduced man by an apple, it came about that when, fierce with hunger, they seized the fruit ripe upon the branches, the apples were found to be filled with soot and ashes. By these striking suggestions Milton gives us his idea how angels and men reap what they sow. Should the literary critic seek an appropriate heading for the tenth book of "Paradise Lost," he could hardly find one more appropriate than this: "What Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap."

This law of the spiritual harvest that visits retribution upon unrighteousness or visits reward upon integrity seems to have cast a spell of fascination upon all great writers. Even those who have written upon liberty, law, patriotism, or love have not been content to end their task until they have, through song or story, illustrated this law of the soul's seedtime and harvest. The ancient poet who wrote at a time near to the dawn of history makes a strong man go forth to seize his neighbor's flocks and herds, but returning the prince found that in his absence enemies had looted his palace and carried off not only his treasure, but his wife and children. In ending the tale the writer adds the reflection that "God is just!"

Later on the Grecian threw this moral principle into a tale for children, a story that still lives under the title "Baucis and Philemon." One day two travelers entered a village, but as they drew near, each housewife slammed her door, while rude boys threw clods at the wayfarers and let loose their dogs, who snapped and snarled after the travelers. Passing quite beyond the village the pilgrims came to a humble cottage. As they approached his door Philemon came forth to offer refuge, and apologized for the rudeness of his neighbors. The old man prepared for them seats in the grateful shade and hurried to bring them fresh water from the cool spring. Baucis also hastened to bring the loaf, with her one small honeycomb and her pitcher of milk. When the glasses were filled twice and thrice and still the rich milk failed not, the old housewife marveled, until she found that in the bottom of the pitcher there was a fountain from which the rich milk gushed so long as it was needed. Nor did the honeycomb fail, nor did the sharp knife make the wheaten loaf to be less. Having told us that the morning brought disaster to the inhospitable villagers, but brought assurance from these angels who had been entertained unawares that Baucis and Philemon should never more want for earthly goods, the writer of the olden times sets forth for us the principle that good man and bad alike reap what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest like unto itself. Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of this principle. Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his own scaffold. David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him of his wife, and when a few years have passed, in turn David is robbed of his wife, his palace also, and his city.

Walter Scott believes in moral retribution. He tells us of a youth who deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might split and, rebounding, pass through his eye. Now it happened that the brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon. That night, alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that he had wickedly planned for his brother. George Eliot, too, has dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle. The orphan child, Tito, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who lavishes upon him all his wealth. But when the youth was grown to full strength and beauty, one night Tito left his adopted father in slavery and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land. Years passed by and, with his stolen wealth, Tito bought wife, palace, position, fame. He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as that he would reap a similar harvest. But one day the people discovered his falsehood and attacked Tito. A mob pursued him through the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast himself into the River Arno. When Tito had swum far down the river to the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ashore, he looked up, and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured trotting along the shore side by side with the swimmer. In the old man's eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp knife. What the youth had sown years before now at last he was to reap. When increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him as a harvest—good measure, heaped up, and shaken together.

History permits no man to escape the reflection that if, for the time being, individuals have escaped this moral law, nations have felt its full force. Nature does, indeed, walk through the fields with footsteps so gentle as to disturb no drop of dew hanging upon the blade of grass. Nature also hath her sterner aspect, and for the sons of iniquity her footsteps are earthquakes, her strokes are strokes of war and of pestilence. When Sophocles worked out the law of moral retribution for King Oedipus and Antigone, his daughter, the poet might well have gone on to note that if the Grecian army had sacked the Trojan cities the time would come when the Roman fleet would sack her cities and make her sons to toil as captives. Later on, if the Roman conquerors swept the East for corn and wheat, looted stores and shops, pillaged palaces for treasure for triumphal processions, the time came when Nature and God decreed that the vast wealth piled up in the Roman capital should excite the cupidity of the Goths, until at last the streets of that great city were swept with flame and store-houses were pillaged by marauders. In reviewing the history of Venice Ruskin was so impressed with this principle of the moral harvest that he affirms that the history of palace and cathedral, of fleets and navies, is simply the story, written by a pen dipped in fire and blood, of how the children reaped what the fathers had sown.

For many months past the statesmen of England have been sending forth discussions reviewing the career of their country. In the light of the Eastern problem one of these authors reflects that whenever England has sown injustice to a weaker nation she has reaped injustice and retribution for herself. He notes that in the last century the governors of England—for example, Lord Hastings—went through the land robbing rajahs, despoiling the people by false weights and measures, until they had turned the whole country into one vast desert. The hour came when before the House of Commons Burke impeached Hastings for high crimes and misdemeanors, as the enemy of India and England and all men. But England was content to impose a trifling fine upon her wicked official. How could she give up the treasure she had filched for herself? Years passed and an injured people brooded upon its wrongs, and the time came when what England had sown in tears she reaped in blood. One day the Indian soldiers mutinied. The next day the wells were filled with the bodies of English officers, their wives and children; then merchants and missionaries and travelers were slaughtered. For weeks the strife went on. If once the English soldier had pillaged the Indian villages, now, in turn, the English quarters were pillaged. "Blind of eye and hard of heart," said the sage statesman. "Retribution hath been visited upon us," said the great leader. "Our jealousy and greed hath ended with that sword being sharpened against ourselves." The note of conviction is in the voice of this statesman, but what saith be save this: "What a man soweth, that also shall he reap!"

All young hearts may well remember that it is safe to do right, but dangerous to sow wrong! No matter how smooth, how soft and sweet, seem the paths of sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth who to-day walks on the street, perchance he would find many who, through excess, are draining away the rich forces of nerve and brain and blood.

Daily they deny reason its book, taste its music, love its noble companionship. At last, when the harp of the physical senses begins to give way, and they fall back upon the mental faculties for pleasure, then these faculties that have been starved shall, in turn, make men suffer. In that hour reason or memory shall say: "Because I called and ye refused; because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock at your desolation when your fear cometh as destruction and your desolation as whirlwind." In Daniel Webster's words of disappointed ambition, "I still live," we see that a statesman sows what he reaps. In Goethe's fearful cry for "more light" we see that the poet who sows darkness shall reap darkness. In Lord Byron's piteous "I must sleep now" we see that he who sows morbidness and passion reaps feverishness and shame. The law is inexorable. He who sows foul thoughts shall reap the foul countenance of a fiend. He who sows pure thoughts shall reap the sweetness and nobility of the face of Fra Angelico. He who sows reflection shall reap wisdom. He who sows sympathy shall reap love. The good Samaritan who sows tenderness to the man wounded by the wayside shall reap tenderness when angels stoop to bind up his broken heart.



THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.



"Love is the fulfilling of the law."—Romans, xiii, 10.

"Men may die without any opinions, and yet be carried into Abraham's bosom, but if we be without love, what will knowledge avail? I will not quarrel with you about opinions. Only see that your heart be right with God. I am sick of opinions. Give me good and substantial religion, a humble, gentle love of God and man."—John Wesley.

"Therefore, come what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world cannot withstand forever! Learn the new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but to love as He loved. Go forth in this Spirit to your life duties, go forth, children of the Cross, to carry everything before you, and win victories for God by the conquering power of a love like his."—Frederick W. Robertson.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE LOVE THAT PERFECTS LIFE.

The purpose of Christ's mission to earth was the development of ideal manhood. The instruments he fashioned and the agents he ordained all wrought unceasingly toward a manhood that was ample in faculty, fertile in resource and ripe in those qualities that make for maturity of character. He sought to teach men how to carry their faculties through all the strife, collisions and rivalries of life, without damaging men or being damaged by them.

Always to the children of good fortune right living has seemed easy, for these live midst sheltered conditions and exhibit goodness as naturally as the sheltered southern nooks have grass and flowers when all the northern hillsides are brown with death or white with snow. But Christ came teaching the children of weakness and misfortune how to bear up midst adversity, how to sing songs at midnight and how, through defeat, to march to final victory. So beautiful was the manhood he unveiled before men that, beholding it, men low and men high, the publican and prodigal, the centurion and ruler also, quivered with hope, as the harp quivers under the touch of the harper.

For his ideal includes every quality that kindles admiration and delight; all gentleness, all goodness, all simplicity, the refinement of the scholar, the insight of the seer, the courage that makes the youth a hero. In luminous hours men behold visions of ideal perfection hanging like stars in a midnight sky. Unfortunately for many, these visions burst like bubbles and soon pass away. Artists and sculptors look forward to an hour when, by a touch here and a touch there, the statue shall be perfected and the portrait completed; so Christ pointed forward to an hour when, having been wrought upon by darkness and by light, by defeat and by victory, by sorrow and by joy, at last wisdom shall be made perfect, judgment know no error, love have full disclosure and the soul enter into unhindered perfection.

Great are the achievements of the chisel upon the block of marble, marvelous the skill with which a master turns a dead canvas into lustrous life and beauty. Matchless the power that turns a clod into a rosy apple, a seed into a sheaf of wheat, a babe into a sage; yet neither nature nor art knows any transformation like unto that wonder of time when, by slow processes, God develops man out of rude and low conditions of life unto those high and spiritual moods when selfishness gives place to self-sacrifice, coarseness to sweetness, hardness to gentleness and love, and perfection dwells in man as ripeness dwells in fruit, as maturity dwells in harvests.

The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet, rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton, "what God may have determined for me I know not, but this I know—that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry than I, day and night, the idea of perfection." Haunted by his dream of excellence, the poet likened himself to one born beside the throne and reared in purple, yet by some mischance left to gypsies, midst poverty and neglect, while thoughts of the glory he has known and that imperial palace whence he came, are never out of mind. In picturing forth these conceptions of sweetness and light, philosophers have found it hard to summarize the qualities that make up ideal manhood.

Conceding that the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty—and must be united in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face—so the poets and the philosophers, with their diverse conceptions of ideal manhood, divide the kingdom of character. "The true man cannot be a fragmentary man," said Plato. Is he not one-sided who masters the conventional refinement and the stock proprieties, yet indulges in drunkenness and gluttony? "Pleasure must not be his sole aim," said the accomplished Chesterfield. "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. Those who have no experience are dazzled with there [Transcriber's note: their?] glare, but I have been behind the scenes and have seen all the coarse pulleys, which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines that excite the admiration of the ignorant audience."

Nor is scholarship enough. From Solomon to Burke, the wisest men have been the saddest of men. The Scottish physician who ordered his secretary to select from his library all the books upon medicine and surgery that were printed prior to 1880 and sell them, tells us how futile is the pursuit of wisdom and how rapidly the systems of to-day become the cast-off garments of to-morrow. Nor must the perfect man represent power and wealth alone, for "the wealth of Croesus cannot bring sleep to the sick man tossing upon his silken couch, and all the Alexanders and Napoleons have shed bitter tears, conquering or conquered." He who is merchant or scholar or ruler, and only that, climbs his pillar like Simeon Stylites.

All such know not that the world itself is a pillar all too small for the soul to stand upon. This life-chase after bubbles, this fighting for trifles, this pursuit of false grails, reminds us of the story of that Grecian boy lured to his death by the enchantress. Going into the palace garden to pluck a rose, the youth beheld the form of a young girl standing in the edge of the glimmering woods. With soft words and sweet, she called him. Forgetting his dear ones in the palace, the youth ran after his enchantress. Along a pathway of flowers she danced before him, sometimes sweeping the strings of her harp, sometimes singing, and shaking her curls at his haste, ever shooting arrows from her eyes, yet ever just eluding his embrace. On and on she led him into the bog, that covered his garments with mud, through the thorns and brambles that tore his white skin, over rocks steep and sharp. Ever and anon the youth stopped to pluck the thorns from his hands and bind up his bleeding feet; then, gathering his torn purple about him, he plunged on, in the hope of drinking at last the sweet cup of her sorcery. When, at the end of the day, the desire of his heart was given him, the illusion fell away, for the youth embraced not a beautiful maiden, but an old hag, who had led him into the desert to a hut whose stones were darkness and whose walls were confusion.

As the term genius includes all those forms of culture termed poetry, music, eloquence, leadership, so love is a term that includes all those shapes of human welfare known as education, refinement, liberty, happiness. Properly defined, love is that exalted state of mind and heart when reason is luminous, when judgment and imagination glow under its influence just as the electric bulb glows under the living current. There are three possible states and moods under which the mind may fulfill its functions. There is a dull and quiescent condition when reason and judgment act, but act without fervor. Power is there, but it is latent, just as heat is in the unkindled wood lying on the grate, but the heat is hidden.

Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the influence of conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and flashes of thought, through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second stage is associated with talent, but when, through birth or ancestry, the mind works ever in regnant and supernal moods, it is called genius. Affirming that all minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we may also affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce has been wrought during these exalted states when love for the work in hand has rendered the mind luminous and crystalline.

It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature's secret. When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot, with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice. But when the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded gradually away in the manner described by him in his "Intimations of Immortality," then also his power to describe nature faded away. For only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.

His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias. Passing his hands slowly over the broken marble, the sculptor entered into the thought of the great Grecian, and with love for his art glowing in his face and thrilling in his voice, he mused aloud upon the genius of Phidias. Love of his art made all his days bright and all his moons honeymoons. When Wyatt Eaton, the artist, was in Millet's home he noticed that when the wife called the artist from his task to his noonday meal, the artist's whole being had so gathered itself into the eye that there was no life left with which to hear. Love lent genius skill. No other sentiment is so universal or so powerful in its influence as love that energizes the mind and heart. Love lent swiftness to the feet of Sir Galahad; lent his heart courage; lent his sword victory. Entering the palace, love, said Cicero, "makes gold shine." Love for the birds lent fame to Audubon; just as love for the bees lent fortune to Huber. Love of knowledge hived all the wisdom in the libraries; love of beauty adorned all the galleries; love of service organized all the philanthropies. To-morrow, at the behest of love, and in the interests of dear ones at home, all the wheels will begin to revolve; all the trains go out and all the ships come in. When a man of real force and worth passes upward into that high state of purity and sweet reasonableness called love, he becomes almost sacred and exhales an ineffable and mysterious atmosphere. Great is the power of trade; wonderful the influence of fortune and force; marvelous the hundred instrumentalities and institutions of society, but above all of them is man, whose love can indeed "make riches splendid," whose wisdom love can make mellow, whose strength love can make gentle, whose defeats love can turn into victories. In that hour one hundred men dwell in one man.

Love also perfects morality and fulfills all ethical laws. What health is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark's song, what perfume is to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover from the poison of Circe's cup than to escape the effect of disobedience to the laws of God.

Fortunately nature is so organized as to keep the consequences of ill-doing ever before man's eyes. Disobeying the law of fire man is burned; disobeying the law of steam man is scalded; disobeying the law of honor friends avert their faces, or the door of the jail closes behind the wrongdoer. So few are these laws and so simple that they could not be plainer were they emblazoned upon the sky as an ever-present scroll. There is the law of reverence. Conscious of vastness and sublimity, in the presence of mountains, man, frail, ignorant, passing swiftly to his grave, is asked to bow his head in the presence of the Eternal One.

There is also the law of truth in speech, the law of purity in thought, the laws that forbid theft and covetousness and killing. But all these laws are gathered up and fulfilled in love, just as the seven colors of nature are gathered up and fulfilled in the one white sunbeam. And he who loves will fulfill all these laws. Loving himself, man will not waste his physical treasure. As it was vandalism for the iconoclasts to pass through the cathedrals of Europe whitewashing the frescoes and breaking down the statues, much more is it vandalism for men to destroy that temple of God called the body. If man loves his mind he will, through culture, lead what is germinal and latent forth into full blossom and fruitage. He who loves scholarship will make haste to double the books in his library. He who loves sweetness will double the sweetness of his melody. He who loves friends will double their number and strengthen their affection. He who loves industry will strengthen his toil and lend it influence. Looking toward the home, love fulfills the law of helpfulness. Looking toward the weak and poor, love fulfills the law of service and sympathy. Looking toward a great crisis for humanity, love fulfills the law of martyrdom.

Just as summer fulfills all ripeness and growth for seed and root and tree, so love fulfills all laws for self and man and the all-loving God.

After thirty-six years of tireless toil Herbert Spencer has brought to a conclusion the labors of a lifetime. His final volume places the capstone on the structure of his philosophy. In reading these pages no thoughtful mind can fail to perceive that for science also has dawned the vision splendid. If history began with an era of force, its last and crowning achievement will be the era when love, organized into laws and institutions, will lend perfection to civilization. The upward march of mankind has been slow and accompanied by tremendous losses. At the beginning strength prevailed and weakness went to the wall; the bird with the swiftest wing first reached the fountain, the deer with the swiftest foot reached the place of shelter, the ox with the strongest thrust reached the richest fodder. Pushed back, weakness perished, while strength prevailed and propagated.

This law of violence received its first check through the parental instinct. Parenthood built a fortress with walls and bulwarks about the babe. Love of offspring caused a weakness to survive. At last an era dawned when many parents united to construct a shield for weak children indeed, but also for weak adults. The state lifted the shield between weakness and its oppressor. The widow and the orphan were permitted to glean after the harvesters. The traveler, passing through the field, might pluck a handful of corn or pull a bunch of figs. The creditor must not take the blanket or coat from the laborer nor the boat from the poor fisherman, nor the plane or saw from the poor carpenter. Stimulated by Christ's example and teachings, society began to multiply the bulwarks against tyranny and selfishness. Looking toward the child, for the protection of weakness and unripeness, the state built these shields called the school and library, looking toward the unfortunate and those weak in body or mind, the state built bulwarks called asylum and hospital. Looking toward the chimney-sweep, the factory boys and girls, the state began to soften pain and mitigate the distress of labor. Looking toward the serf and the slave and the prisoner, the novelist and poet constructed song and story as shields for the protection of the weak and the oppressed.

One hundred years ago a man was as a beast of the field, and the slaughter of men in Italy, by the tyrant who ruled over them, stirred no more thought in England than the news of the slaughter of so many beasts. But fifty years ago the state had become so gentle toward the weak that when Mr. Gladstone made a protest against the savagery and infuriated cruelty wrought upon the inmates of the dungeons of Italy, then the heart of Europe turned toward Rome, the throne trembled upon its foundations. Formerly when any foreign government wished to colonize Africa, they sent out a regiment of soldiers, cut off a slice of the country and annexed it. Now public sentiment forbids such tyranny. The only way the aggressive nations can obtain possession of new territory is to do it under the name of a protectorate, sugar-coating, as has been said, the deeds of tyranny. If the dungeon has been rifled of its prey, if cruelty has been scourged out of the land, if despotism tottered, it is because society was slowly climbing up that stairway, of which the first step is fear and the last is love.

In these January days our earth, snow-clad and frost-bound, seems like a huge ball of ice. Yet all unconsciously to itself, the earth is being swept on into spring and summer. Unconsciously, but none the less truly, society, under the silent and secret impulse of the great God, has been journeying upward toward the time when love shall fulfill every law; when kindness and sympathy shall be organized in manners and customs. All the revolutions of the past, all the clangor of war, all the tumbling down of Bastilles, all the piling up of cities, is as nothing to the advance of the world toward that era when love shall perfect man's institutions and civilization.

Love also perfects religion. It is the glory of Christ that he unveils the sovereignty of character and crowns manhood with all-maturing and all-perfecting love. Looking backward, man finds that all religions fall into four classes: There is the religion of fear and force, when man offers sacrifices to appease the gods and conciliate justice. There is the religion of law, when men reduce life to formal rules, and the Pharisee rigorously fulfills his duty as chief, or trader, or friend. There is the religion of romanticism, when men of powerful intellect and strong imagination evolve their ideal and, withdrawing to some cave, give themselves to reverie. In all such self becomes an orb, so large as to eclipse brother man and God. Last of all there is the religion of Christ, in which love is root, blossom and fruitage. It aims at the development and unfolding of everything that is gracious in life, whatever strikes at admiration, whether it is in school, in art, in song, in wit, in travel, in books; whatever is praiseworthy in courage or endurance, whatever has fineness and sweetness and nobility; all that belongs to the hero and patriot; all that belongs to the seer and scholar; all that belongs to leadership in trade and commerce—all these elements are to be united and carried upward into the sweetness and purity of life, until the full man, standing apart and standing above life, seems to have been informed with divine love, as with a presence.

And when love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to bless others. Christ's disciples are not here to be ministered unto, but to minister. Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle toward those with hollow eyes and famine-stricken faces. Love is kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened countenance. Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity, as a man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in the Alpine drifts. And this religion of love takes on a thousand modern forms. If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm, as did Grace Darling to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to those tossed upon life's billows, to succor and to save. For love is making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and will at last make the church and state beautiful. Men will not bow down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor esthetic power; but, in the presence of a great soul, filled with vigor of inspiration and glowing with love, man will do obeisance. There is no force upon earth like divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will sweeten and regenerate society.

Love also fulfills immortality. Of late science has reduced the number of things that endure. The astronomer tells us the sun is burning up, and will be a dying ash-heap as truly as the coal in man's cellar will be exhausted. The geologists tell us the flowing of "the crystal springs wearies the mountain's heart as truly as the beating of the crimson pulse wearies man's; that the force of the iron crag is abated in its time, like the strength of human sinews in old age." The everlasting mountains are doomed to decay as surely as the moth and worm. It seems that the shining texture of stars and suns must wax old, like a garment, and decay. If now youth is eager to master all knowledge, plunge into the thick of life's battle, forge some tool, enact some law, right some wrong, the time will speedily come when the man will sit down amid the ruins of his life and confess that his idols have been shivered, one by one.

He who loves endures. For him always all is well. That youth with a great love for nature's treasures that promised fame, but who found his open book crimson with the life-current, may dry his tears, for love is immortal and beyond he will fulfill the dreams denied here. Because he loves the slave, Livingstone, falling in the African forest, need not fear, for love will make his work immortal. The sweet mother, whose love overarches the cradle with thoughts that for number are beyond the stars, need not fear to leave behind the gentle babe, for everlasting love will encircle it. Falling into unconsciousness and putting out upon the yeasty sea midst the falling darkness, man may call back: "I still live." For God is love and God is eternal. Therefore man who loves is immortal also.



HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.



"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let Darkness keep her raven gloss; Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with Death to beat the ground!"—Tennyson.

"Soul, rule thyself. On passion, deed, desire, Lay thou the laws of thy deliberate will. Stand at thy chosen post. Faith's sentinel: Though Hell's lost legions ring thee round with fire, Learn to endure. Dark vigil hours shall tire Thy wakeful eyes; regrets thy bosom thrill; Slow years thy loveless flower of youth shall kill; Yea, thou shalt yearn for lute and wanton lyre. Yet is thy guerdon great; thine the reward Of those elect, who, scorning Circe's lure, Grown early wise, make living light their lord. Clothed with celestial steel, these walk secure, Masters, not slaves. Over their heads the pure Heavens bow, and guardian seraphs wave God's sword."—V. A. Symonds.



CHAPTER XIV.

HOPE'S HARVEST, AND THE FAR-OFF INTEREST OF TEARS.

The soul is monarch of three kingdoms. Man lives at once in the present, the past and the future. Memory presides over yesterday; to-day is ruled by reason; to-morrow is under the sway of hope. The ancient seer who stood by the historic vine reflecting how the rain of yesterday had disappeared to give its sweet liquors to the roots only to reappear to-morrow in purple clusters, gave us a beautiful image of himself. Each human life is like unto a vine—its trunk manifest in the present; its roots deeply buried in the past; its branches throwing themselves forward, ripening fruit for days to come. Life is a solid column of days all compacted together. To-day's usefulness is in the number of wise, happy and helpful yesterdays, whose accumulated treasures crowd forward the soul's present activities. But for his yesterdays stored up in memory man would be impotent for any heroic thought or deed. He would remain a perpetual infant. As the child journeys away from the cradle memory gathers up and carries forward faces, words, books, arts, sciences, literatures, and these recollections are embalmed and transmitted as soul-capital, legacies unspeakably precious.

Yesterday, therefore, is no mausoleum of dead deeds; no storehouse of mummies. Memory is a granary holding seed for to-morrow's sowing; memory is an armory holding weapons for to-morrow's battles, memory is a medicine-chest with balms for to-morrow's hurts; memory is a library with wisdom for to-morrow's emergency. Yesterday holds the full store of to-day's civilization, contains our tools, conveniences, knowledges; contains our battlefields and victories; above all gives us Bethlehem and Calvary. But alone man's yesterday is impotent; his to-morrow insufficient. The true man binds all his days together with an earnest, intense, passionate purpose. His yesterdays, to-days and to-morrows march together, one solid column, animated by one thought, constrained by one conspiracy of desire, energizing toward one holy and helpful purpose, to serve man and love God.

God governs man through the regency of hope. The reasons thereof are self-evident. Man is born a long way from home. No cradle rocks a full-orbed manhood. The babe begins a mere handful of germs; a bough of unblossomed buds. It is a weary climb from nothing to manhood, at its best. As things rise in the scale of being the distance between birth and maturity widens. Mollusks are born close up to their full estate, sandflies mature in two days, butterflies in two weeks, humming-birds in as many months. But let no man think the vast all-shadowing redwood trees of California grew in a mushroomic night. When the seed first thrust its rootlets down into the soil and its plumule up to the sunshine it entered upon a long career. Saved by hope after 800 years of growth it gives shade to myriads of birds; beams for lath and loom and ship in the service of industry; lends pen and pencil to poet and artist in the service of beauty; through desk and pew enters into man's intellectual and moral life; through instruments of convenience strengthens the sweet amenities of the home; working, it also waited and is saved by hope.

Man stands at the very summit of creation. He is at the head of all that creep and swim and walk and fly. Preparatory to his dominion he begins with the lowest and runs the whole gamut of experience of all living things below him. And hope alone can save him as he journeys upward through all the intermediate stages on his way to his throne and his God. Big with destiny, he is saved by hope. Not to-day and not yesterday can suffice. The present offers only standing room—four-and-twenty hours. Memory is a bin banked with snowdrifts, not the waving harvest-fields. Man's life is all in front of him. His large endowment asks for an extended period of time, asks seventy years for skill toward his body; asks an immortal destiny for mind and heart. He is saved by hope and futurity.

Consider the scope and functions of hope and aspiration. Man is governed from above and within; while rocks, birds, beasts are governed from below and without. Gravity holds the bowlder in its place. The channel saith to the river: "Thus far and no farther." The fawn that is struck, the lion that strikes, the eagle dwelling above both, are controlled by fear. The charioteer drives his steeds from behind and controls by rein and scourge. But man is controlled from within and in front. God does not scourge his children forward through whips of fear. Hopes moving on before him lure him onward. The Italian artist shows us the child passing near the precipice. Then drew near a gentle guardian spirit. The unseen friend rolled along the pathway apples of Paradise and the child, following after with shouts of glee, was lured from danger. To the beauty of the artist's thought Homer's story adds elements of instruction. When the Grecian boy was pursued by a giant whose breath was fire, whose hand held a huge club, two invisible beings lent help. One took the boy's hand and lifted him forward, the other casting an invisible cord over him flew before him until his speed was doubled and the palace gates gave shelter. Oh, beautiful story of God's gentle rule o'er men! When troubles sweep over the world like sheeted storms, when men fear exceedingly and strong men cower and shrink and little ones believe the next step to be the precipice, then God smiles. Striking some sweet bell he sends forth messengers to lure men forward; they hang stars in man's night; they whisper that the twilight is nothing, since it is morning twilight; that fears are bats and owls hooting at the dawn; that hope is a lark singing the new day; that God reigns and all is well. Then depart all fears and superstitions. The courage of the future comes; the columns begin a forward march. These upward movements of society are the yearnings of God's heart lifting his children forward by hope.

Hope and aspiration also furnish the secret springs of civilization. All things useful and beautiful were once only hopes and ideas. Free institutions are ideals of liberty, crystallized into word forms. Tools and instruments are ideals dressed up in iron clothes. The early forest man dwelt in a cave; ached with cold and moaned with hunger. Going into the forest to dig roots he found honey hived by the bees and nuts stored up by squirrels against the winter. Straightway hope suggested to him a larger granary, whence hath come all man's bins and storehouses. Man plucked a large plum and found it sour, and another plum small, but sweet. Hope suggested that he unite the two and strike through the abundant acid juices of the one with the sugar of the other. Thence came all vineyards and orchards. Digging in the soil tired him, but hope suggested that his pet ox might pull his forked stick; when the wooden stick wore blunt hope replaced it with an iron point; when the iron point refused to scour hope suggested steel; when the steel made his burden light and doubled the pace of his steeds, hope suggested a seat on the plow; when the riding-plow gave him time to think, hope suggested he could increase the harvest by doubling the depth, when the weight was overheavy for his beasts, hope suggested a steam-plow. The Kensington Museum exhibits the growth of the plow idea, as it moved from the forked stick to the "steam gang." If in this procession of material plows we could see the procession of ideal plows we would find that thoughts and hopes are a thousandfold more than material things.

By hope also do the people increase in wisdom and culture and character. Millions of men are digging and toiling twelve hours each day; and God hath sent forth hope to emancipate them from drudgery. The man digging with his pick hath a far-away look as he toils. Hope is drawing pictures of a cottage with vines over the doorway, with some one standing at the gate, a sweet voice singing over the cradle. Hope makes this home his; it rests the laborer and saves him from despair. Multitudes working in the stithy and deep mines sweeten their labor and exalt their toil by aspiring thoughts. Thinking of his little ones at home, the miner says: "My children shall not be as their father was; my drudgery is not for self, but for love's sake; the sweat of my brow is oil in the lamp of love; I will light it to-night on the sacred altar of home." Here is the secret of the rise and reign of the people. This explains all man's progress in knowledge and culture. As the fruits and flowers rise rank upon rank in response to the advancing summer, so all that is most refined and exalted in man's mind or heart bursts forth in new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the revelation of that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration incessantly proceed.

Hope's noble ministry hath grievous enemies. Among these let us include a false use of the past. Yesterday contains sins and mistakes, but multitudes err in dwelling too much upon their wrongs. Each man hath had his temptations, each his fierce conflicts and defeats, each bears grievous scars from the battle-field. Yet if one constantly revives all his old sins life will be filled with hideous specters. Memory will become a place of torment and a ghastly chamber of horrors. We shall be the children of despondency and wretchedness. Memory will be a graveyard; the past will give no light save the "will-o-the-wisp" light from putrescence and decay. All the springs of joy will be poisoned by morbid griefs that keep open old wounds. The city hath its offal heap where refuse matter is destroyed; each home its garret, the contents cast out at regular intervals; the individual throws away his old clothes, old tools, old vehicles. Why should not the soul have its refuse valley—where the past is cast out of life and memory?

Farmers' boys sometimes set steel traps by shocks of corn whither come quail and prairie chickens. Stepping upon the traps, the cruel jaws close upon foot or wing and the bleeding bird beats out its life upon the frozen ground. Memory often with cruel jaws holds men entrapped. A single error wrecks the whole life. But once forgiven of God let the sin go. Reflection upon past sins is good only so long as it produces revulsion from sin, and like a bow shoots the soul toward God and righteousness. God is like a mother who forgives the child's sin into everlasting forgetfulness. Man should be ashamed to remember what God forgets. "I will cast your sins into the depth of the sea." Someone says: "God receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it cleansed—itself unsoiled." Gather up, therefore, all thy sins—old wrongs, old hatreds, burning angers, memories of men's treachery; stuff them into a bag and heave them into the gulf of oblivion. Your life is not in the past, but in the future. "We are saved by hope."

Multitudes may embitter their new year by undue reflections over opportunities neglected and lost in the past and denied in the present. Professor Agassiz tells of a friend who sold his farm in Pennsylvania for $5,000 to invest it in Dakota, and after losing all in the new home returned to find the German who purchased the homestead had found oil and great wealth in a swamp which he had tried to drain off. An old gentleman recently told of his refusal in 1840 to accept as payment of a small note a lot on a corner in Chicago now worth a million dollars, and he shed bitter tears over the loss of property he never owned. When Ali Hafed heard of the diamonds in India he sold his estate and went forth to seek his fortune. His successor, watering his camel in the garden, saw the gleam of gems in the white sand and discovered the Golconda mines. Had Ali Hafed had eyes to see his would have been boundless treasure at home instead of poverty, starvation and death. These and similar legends stand for the opportunities that have gone forever. How many neglected their opportunities for education; how they knocked unbidden at every door and no man opened. Others were denied culture, and now feel they are unfulfilled prophecies. Many by one error have injured eye or ear or lung or limb or nervous system. They grievously handicapped themselves. Others by ingratitude, infidelity to trusts, treachery to friends, have poisoned happiness. Repentance is theirs, and also forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. The past is full of bitterness.

Let the dead past bury its dead. The future is still ours. The trees in October willingly let go their leaves to fall into the ditch. Their life is not in last year's leaves, but in the infant buds that crowd the old leaves off. Put forth new activities. Open new furrows. Sow new seed. All the tomorrows are thine; but they are few and short. Fulfill his dictum who said: "I am as one going once across this vast continent; I would lean forth and sow as far as hand can scatter my seed. Let the angels count the bundles." No man should be discouraged in whom God believes, preserving him in life. Let hope in God sweeten life's bitterness.

Another enemy of hopefulness is found in nervous excesses and overwork. Men drain away their vitality. Ambitions unduly stimulate the brain. Many break the laws of sleep and the laws of digestion and the laws of nerve sobriety. They spend their brain capital. Then they grow hopeless toward home and business. Ill-health spreads a gloom over all life. Every judgment is pessimistic; it could not be otherwise. The jaundiced eye yellows the landscape. The sweetest music rasps like a file upon the nervous ear. Thomas Carlyle's pessimism was largely physical. He overworked upon his life of Oliver Cromwell. Maurice once said: "Carlyle believed in God down to the time of Oliver Cromwell." Once, in a moment of depression, Lyman Beecher prayed: "Lord, keep us from despising our rulers, and help them to stop acting so we cannot help despising them." Poor, nerve-racked Pascal, grew fearful lest his affection for his sister, who had nursed him through a long illness, was sinful. One day he wrote in his journal: "Lord, forgive me for loving my dear sister so much!" Afterward he drew his pen through the word "dear." Hope and trust toward God go with health. Sickliness is not saintliness. God cannot save by hope what man destroys by ill-health.

Dean Stanley used hopefulness as a test of all systems of truth. Rightly so. God is the God of hope, and his truth, like himself, carries the atmosphere of good cheer. The falsity of medievalism appears in this—it robbed men of joy and gladness. God was the center of darkness. His throne was iron. His heart was marble. His laws were huge implements of destruction. His penalties were red-hot cannon balls crashing along the sinner's pathway. Repentance toward God was moving toward the arctics and away from the tropics. Christianity was anything but "peace on earth, good will to men."

Philosophers destroyed God's winsomeness. The reformers came in to lead men away from medievalism back to God himself. Men found hope again in redemptive love. They saw that any conception of God that dispirited and depressed men was perverted and false. No man hath done more to establish this fact than him who long ago said: "Any presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that does not come to the world as the balmy days of May comes to the unlocked northern zones; any way of preaching the love of God in Christ which is not as full of sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the advent; any way of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as many birds as there are in June and as many flowers as the dumb meadows know how to bring forth; any method of bringing before men the doctrine of salvation which does not make everyone feel, 'There is hope for me in God—in the divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of human life and society,' is spurious—is a slander on God and is blasphemy against his love."

Hope hath her harvest also for teachers and reformers. Often men think their work is squandered. They seem to be sowing seed not upon the Nile, to find it again abundantly, but in midocean, to sink and come to naught. Parents and teachers break their hearts, fearing their watchfulness and instruction have failed. Men sow wheat and wait six months for a harvest; but they sow moral seed Sunday and on Monday whip their children because the seed has not ripened. They forget that apples bitter in July may be sweet in August. To-day's vice in the child is often to-morrow's virtue, as acid juices through frost become saccharine. Yesterday the mother rocked a little angel in the cradle; to-day she moans: "Alas, that I should have rocked a little fox, a little serpent, a little wolf!" To-morrow the child becomes a model of truth and integrity.

The sage might have said: "It is good that woman should hope and wait." Truth's errand has always been a successful errand. Not a single social truth or civic truth or moral truth has ever been lost out of the world. Secrets of cruelty and fraud, secrets of oppression and sin perish, but nothing that makes life happier or better hath been forgotten. We do not have to keep God and truth alive, they keep us alive. Vegetable seeds can be killed, but not moral seeds. When God issues his silent command to the earth flying into winter and wheels it back toward summer, it is given to no man to put a brake upon warmth; nor can he go up against the spring with swords and banners. But easier this than staying the upward march of mankind. God is abroad upon a mission of recovery. Open thy hand, O publicist! and sow thy seed. The seed shall perish, but not the harvest.

Our childhood was pleased with the story of the old monk who was shipwrecked alone on a desert isle. He always carried with him a few roots and seeds. Planting these, he died, but sailors coming twenty years later found the isle waving with fruit trees. To the beauty of this legend let us add the truth of one who has made all this land his debtor. In 1801 a youth passed through western Pennsylvania. He was collecting apple seeds with which to found orchards in the then unbroken states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. When he came to an open, sunny spot in the forest he would plant his seeds and protect them with a brush fence. Years afterward new settlers found hundreds of these embryo orchards in the forests. Thrice he floated his canoe laden with seeds down the Ohio to the settlers in Kentucky. To this brave man, called by our Congressional Record "Johnny Appleseed," whole states owe their wealth and treasure of vineyards and orchards. This intrepid man is a beautiful type of all those who, passing through life's wastes, sow the land with God's eternal truths, whose leaves and fruits heal nations. If God remembers the roots in dark forests he will not forget his truths in human hearts. Therefore, sow thy seed. Ye are saved by hope.

The ground and basis of all hope whatsoever is God. It is his good providence and redemptive love in Jesus Christ that make us optimists. Hope is not within the scope of our wisdom or culture or skill; and hope is not in our health or tool or treasure. We journey into an unknown future. It is not given to us to know what a day or an hour of the new year may bring forth. How impotent are the wisest and strongest in the hour when we hear the sound of the ocean and in darkness ford the deep and dangerous river, beyond which is high and eternal noon. What can the child on some great ocean steamer caught in a winter's storm do to overcome the tempest? Can it drive the fierce blasts back to their northern haunts? Can its little hand hold the wheel and guide the great ship? Can its voice still the billows that can crush the steamer like an egg-shell? Can its breath destroy the icy coat of mail that covers all the decks? What the child can do is trust the Captain who has brought this same ship through a hundred hard storms. It can rest and trust and hope. And all we upon this great earth-ship have been caught, not in a storm, but in the gulf stream of God's providence. The warm tropic currents sweep us on to the heavenly harbor. The trade winds above aid the forward flight. More than all else is the larger planetary movement that sweeps gulf stream, winds and ship onward towards the infinite. Soon shall we enter into quiet waters and cast out our anchor.

Looking forward, let us hope and cleanse all fear out of life—trust God, love him and rejoice. Even our largest problems need not dispirit us. Problems are not to be analyzed, but accepted. He who analyzes a flower loses it. He who cracks a diamond to see what it is, is without both gem and knowledge. Life's great questions are seeds. Plant a seed, then wait. Some day the flower and fruit will explain the seed. It is well to lay aside difficult questions to be asked some day at the throne of God. Then we will look back to smile at what now disturbs us exceedingly. Remember the Russian Cathedral—travelers tell us the din and noise of the crowds thronging under the dome to those above the dome become a strain of soft music. It is good to hope and wait. Because God lives and loves, man should enter the future as he enters temple or cathedral—to dedicate all its days to hope and aspiration.



INDEX.

Anti-slavery movement, the, Wilberforce, 211 Arnold, Benedict, 243 Arnold of Rugby, 189 Audubon, wife of, 98

Bacon; Pascal, 75 "Baucis and Philemon", 249

Caesar, the value of personality, 16 Carey, William, 171 Carlyle, wife of, 186 Christ, coming of, 122 Christian manhood, the, 259 Christ the supreme example, 30 Civilization, achievements of, 136 Civilization, Christ's promise for, 52 Classic writer, tale of a, 24 Culture, Character, Beauty, the secret of, 163

Darwin on Christian teachers, 168 Desert, oases of, 35 Divine Teacher, the, 177

England, career of, 253 England, orphan babes of, 210 English visitor, the, 148

Fame a holy ambition, 29 Faneuil, Peter, 215 Fathers, the; uprising of 1861, 55 Feeling and sentiment, 142 Forest, a—differing conceptions of, 60 Fourth century, the, 223 France—king of; Marie Antoinette; Carlyle, 63, 64 Friendship an open sesame, 231

Garfield, 158 Genius marred by absence of humble virtues, 207 Gentleness, lack of, 181 God, erroneous conception of, 191 God, man's attitude toward, 65 God, punishments of, 85 God the ground and basis of all hope, 194 God's world a good world, 36 Gough, John B., 144 Great hearts, 134 Greatness an accumulation of little deeds, 202 Grey, Jane, 201 Growth by accretion; from seed, 242

Heart and intellect, 138 Heart and the age of cruelty, 139 Heart transformations, 145 Heroism—the Divine Teacher; Henry Grady; Napier; Browning; Ruskin, 92-95 Holland, greatness of; William the Silent, 170 Homer's ideal, Helen, 119 Hope and aspiration, functions of, 282 Hope, enemies of, 286 Hope long deferred, 112 Howard; Goodyear; Patteson, 79, 80 Hugo, Victor, 165 Human life, enemies of, 205 Humanity and social sympathy, 100

Industrial law the law of sacrifice, 161 Intelligence, ignorance, 125

Keats, 183 "Keep thou this man", 219 King Saul and the seer, 14

Labor, problem of, 124 Labor, fruition of, 127 Law of violence, the, 270 Life a column of days, 279 Life, problem of, 239 Life's better hours, 233 Lincoln, Abraham, 56 Livingstone, 180 Love, definition of, 264 Love and immortality, 275 Love the fulfillment of all ethical laws, 268 Lowly woman, career of a, 19

Man governed through hope, 280 Man, influence of for good or evil, 13 Man, the great destroyer, 23 Man, a force-producer, 25 Man, unpurposed influence of, 27 Moral retribution, 251

Nature, favors of, 71 Nature, mysterious workings of, 241 New womanhood, the, 98 Nerve and brain force, drain of, 255 "No man careth for my soul", 214

Opportunity, genius of, 220 Orations—American; humble heroes; parental sacrifice; suffering of ancestors; a tribute to the early dead, 81-84

Patriot, the; scholar, the, 70 Peabody, George, 57 Phocion, patriot and martyr, 170 Pompeii, 229 Progress and civilization, law of, 166 Progress, mainspring of, 261 Prosperity, 230

Religion, man's idea of, 121 Religion perfected by love, 273 Retribution, harvest of, 245 Rosetta Stone, the, 197

Science and God, 204 Seas, secrets of, 73 Secret springs of civilization, 283 Self-sacrifice, law of, 159 Society, 58 Society, crying need of, 188 Society, progress of, 123 Spencer, Herbert, 270 Spiritual harvests, Milton's study of, 247 Strategic element, the, 225

The Christian the perfect gentleman, 262 The heart and religious belief, 147 The heart in industry, 151 The heart in civilization, 149 Thirteenth century, the, 224 Thought, liberty of, 78 Time-element, the; Robert Peel; honors are evanescent; man's social and industrial life; realm of law and liberty, 113-119 Time-element in business, 126 Turner, 182 Tyndall, 74

Unsupported intellect, impotency of, 140

Wealth and position—Lord Shaftesbury, 21 Wealth and poverty, 103 Webster, Daniel, 165 Widow's mite, the, 198 Wisdom, culture, character increased by hope, 285

THE END