Books: Lessons in Life
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Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life
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I can only notice briefly the shying that is done by the other
side of society. In effect, I have done this already, perhaps, but
it is proper to say directly that there are many moving in what is
called the best society, who, with a suspicion that they do not
belong there, or a feeling that their position is not secure
there, shy a humble man when they meet him, and dodge all vulgar
associations. I suppose that no true gentleman is ever afraid of
being mistaken for any thing else. A gentleman knows that there is
nothing which is more unlike the character of a gentleman than the
supercilious treatment of the humble, and the fear of losing caste
by treating every class with kindness and politeness. I recognize
no difference between the two shying classes--the men who shy
their fellow-men because they are high, and the men who shy their
fellow-men because they are low. Both are mean, both are unmanly,
and both are deficient in the self-respect necessary to the
constitution of a gentleman. There are no better friends in the
world--no men who understand each other better--none who meet and
converse more freely at their ease--none who have more respect for
each other--than a genuine gentleman and a self-respectful humble
man, who knows his place in the social scale, and is abundantly
satisfied with it. There is no need of any intercourse between
men, of whatever difference of social standing, less dignified and
gentle than this.
LESSON XVII.
FAITH IN HUMANITY.
"Say, what is honor? 'Tis the finest sense
Of justice which the human mind can frame,
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offense,
Suffered or done." WORDSWORTH.
"A child of God had rather ten thousand times suffer for Christ,
than that Christ should suffer by Him."--JOHN MASON.
"For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along
Round the earth's electric circle the swift flash of right or
wrong;
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast frame
Through its ocean-sounded fibres feels the gush of joy or
shame;--
In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim."
LOWELL.
One of the most reliable supports of that which is best in man is
faith in other men. In truth, I believe that no man can lose his
faith in men and women, and remain as good a man as he was before
the loss. Better evidence that a man is rotten in some portion of
his character, or rotten clean through his character, cannot be
found than real, or pretended, loss of faith in his fellows. When
a young man tells me that he has no doubt that certain persons,
publicly reputed to be good, take sly drinks in their own closets,
and descend into grosser indulgences when in strange places; that
the best men are hypocrites; that there is no such thing as
womanly virtue; and that appetite and selfishness outweigh
everywhere principle and manly honor, I know that, ninety-nine
times in one hundred, he finds a reason in his own heart and life
for his declarations. I know that he simply wishes to maintain a
certain degree of self-respect, and that he finds no way to do
this save by bringing everybody around him down to his own level.
A man who has lost his virtue, and is still suffering under the
blows of conscience, is very both to believe that there is any
virtue in the world.
Yet there are circumstances in which faith in humanity is lost
without fault, though never without damage, on the part of the
loser; and very sad cases they are. I remember an abused,
broken-hearted, and forsaken wife, who declared to me her belief
that her husband was no worse than other men (pleasant for me,
wasn't it?)--that there was not a man in the world who could
withstand temptation, or who would have done differently from her
husband under the same circumstances. Why was this? She had loved
this man with all the devotion of which her warm woman's heart was
capable; she had respected him as an embodiment of all manly
qualities; he had impersonated her _beau ideal_. If he--the
peerless, the prince--could fall, and forsake, and forget, who
would not? He who had once been to her the noblest and best man in
the world, could never become worse than the rest of the world.
Now one of the foulest wrongs and one of the deepest injuries
which this man had inflicted upon his wife was the destruction of
her faith in men. He had not only blotted out her faith in him,
but he had blotted out her faith in humanity, and, of course, her
faith in herself. What safeguards of her own virtue fell when her
faith in man was destroyed, she did not know; but, in her
innermost consciousness, she must have grown careless of herself--
possibly desperate.
Hardly a month passes by in which we do not hear of some
defalcation, some lapse from integrity, by a man who, through many
years of business life, had maintained an untarnished reputation.
I have half a dozen such cases in my memory now, and I do not know
what to make of them. When I see a character standing to-day above
all reproach, compacted through many years of manly, honest,
Christian living, overthrown to-morrow, and trodden in the mire, I
am shocked. If such men fall, where are we to look for those who
will not? If such men, with worthy natures, and long practice of
virtue, and myriad motives for the maintenance of an unspotted
character, yield to temptation, and are suddenly overthrown, what
reason have I to suppose that my partner, my brother, myself,
shall escape? I am scared, and grow cautious, and suspicious.
Did you ever think that there is one individual, at least, in the
world--that possibly there are ten individuals, possibly one
hundred, possibly more--who believe that you are, as a man or a
woman, just as nearly right as you can be? Did you ever think that
there are people who pin their faith to you, who believe in you,
who trust you, and that among those people your own reputation is
identified with the reputation of the race? I care not how humble
a man may be, there are always those who trust in him. Think of
the trust which a family of children repose in their parents, and
of the faith which the parents have in their children. Very humble
the parents may be--very untrustworthy as moral guides, and
judges, and authorities; but if they were angels, with the light
of heaven in their eyes, they would not be more confided in and
relied upon by the little ones who cling to their knees. So, at
all ages, we garner our faith in individuals; and so, all men and
women, however humble and unworthy they may be, become the objects
and recipients of this faith.
Now, if there be ten men and women who have garnered their faith
in me--who believe in me, through and through--and whose faith in
all humanity would be sadly shocked, if I should fall, and prove
to them that their confidence had been entirely misplaced, then I
hold for those ten persons the reputation of the human race in my
hands. If you, my reader, have attracted to yourself the honest
faith of a thousand hearts, then you hold in your hands, for those
hearts, the good name of humanity. Upon the shoulders of each man
in the community, there rests a great responsibility. He has not
only his own reputation to take care of, but he has the reputation
of his race. If all mankind are to be thought more meanly of by
mankind, to be less trusted, and less loved, because I have been
untrue, though my untruth touch but one person directly, I commit
a great crime against my race. Yet this crime is nothing by the
side of that which I commit against those who have trusted in me.
It injures them to think meanly of mankind--to have their
confidence shaken in humanity--much more than it injures humanity
to be thought meanly of. A man may as well stab me as to destroy
my faith in my kind, for the comfort and happiness of my life
depend upon the maintenance of this faith.
There are not a few men and women in this world who are thoroughly
conscious that not only their immediate personal friends think
better of them than they deserve, but that the community--all who
know them--accord to them a higher excellence of heart and life
than they really possess. There are some who seem fitted by nature
to attract the affection, and secure the respect of all those with
whom they come into contact, in a very remarkable degree; and,
yet, these persons may be painfully conscious, all the while, that
they are not so good as they are thought to be. They are not
hypocrites; they have never intended to deceive anybody; they have
never pretended to be what they are not; but people believe in
them without limit. A person who has this power of attracting the
confidence of men has forced upon him an immense responsibility.
To say nothing of his duty to himself and his God, he owes it to
his race to be, or to become, as good as he seems. It is
essentially a crime against humanity for one who draws the hearts
of men to him easily, to do any thing which will tend to
depreciate their estimate of his character. A man should carry a
life thus extravagantly over-estimated, as he would carry a cup of
wine--careful that none be spilled, and careful that no impurity
fall into it. It is a great blessing to be loved and respected--
nay to be admired for admirable qualities--and when men are
generous enough to pay in advance for excellence, they should
never be cheated in the amount and quality of the article.
There is such a thing as honor among men; there are such things
as modesty, truth, and integrity. They are qualities that belong
to humanity, irrespective of religion and of Christian culture.
There are men so true to their higher natures that I would trust
them with my name, my gold, my children, my all, without a doubt.
I am proud to claim kinship with such men. They confer dignity
upon the race of which I am a member. I am glad to take their
hands in mine. Suppose one of these--or such things have been--
should deceive me, and I should discover that my name had been
abused, my gold wasted or stolen, and my children ruined by this
man: could I ever trust again? Should I not be humiliated? Should
I not feel disgraced? Should I ever be willing to let another man
into my heart? Should I not doubt whether there are, indeed, such
things as honor, and modesty, and truth, and integrity, in the
world; and thus doubting, would not the strongest defences of my
own virtue be thrown down? The truth is, that no man can do an
unmanly thing without inflicting an injury on the whole human
race. No man can say "I will do as I choose, and it will be
nobody's business." Every man's sin is everybody's business,
literally. Every sin shakes men's confidence in men, and becomes,
whatever its origin, the enemy of mankind; and all mankind have a
right to make common cause in its extermination.
I once heard a careless fellow say that he "professed nothing and
lived up to it;" but "professing nothing" does not exonerate a man
at all, so far as relates to the personal maintenance of honor,
purity, and truth. The man who would excuse a lapse from virtue,
or any obliquity of conduct, on the ground that he did not profess
any thing, simply announces to me the execrable proposition that
every man has a kind or degree of right to be a rascal until he
pledges himself to be something better. There are altogether too
many men in the world who am keeping themselves easy with the
thought that if they are not very good, they never pretended or
professed to be,--as if this failure publicly to pronounce
themselves on the side of the highest morality, were a sufficient
apology for minor delinquencies! It seems to be a poultice of
poppies to some sensitively inflamed consciences, that, whatever
they may have done, they have never broken promises voluntarily
made, to do right--as if there were a release from the obligation
to do right, in failing to make the promise! If it will help a man
to do right, publicly to profess to do right, and to do good to
other men by placing his influence on the right side, then the
first duty a man owes to his race, is to make this declaration.
But I will not linger here, because my words have led me to the
discussion of the obligations of those who have made a profession
of Christianity, and taken upon themselves the vows of Christian
church-membership.
When a man joins a Christian church, he becomes related to that
church in the same way that nature makes him related to humanity.
The reputation of the church is placed in his keeping. He cannot
do an unchristian thing without injury to the church, or without
depreciating, in the eyes of the world, every other member. Think
what a blow is inflicted upon the church of Jesus Christ by such
scandalous immoralities as some of its most prominent members have
been guilty of--by forgeries, and adulteries, and drunkenness!
These cases are not common, but when they occur, they are blows
under which the church reels. The outside world looks on, and
scoffs: "Aha! That's your Christianity, is it?"
I declare that I do not know of a position that more strongly
appeals to a man's personal honor than that of membership in a
Christian church. Even if a man in such a position should say
within himself: "This costs more than it comes to. I love my vices
more than I love the Master whose name I profess. Either openly or
secretly, I will give rein to my appetites and passions"--he
should be arrested by the consideration that he proposes to do
that which will wound the feelings, and degrade the position, and
injure the influence, of thousands of the best men and women in
the world; that he proposes to inflict an irreparable injury upon
a cause which has never injured him, and whose office it is to
save him, and all mankind. Perhaps he is so weak, and temptation
is so strong, that he feels, in the stress of his trial, that he
can afford to perjure his own soul; but if he does, he has no
right to wound others. Better fight the devil until the animal
within us bleeds at every vein--until it dies, if that must be--
than "offend one of these little ones." A man who will join a
church, and then lead an unchristian life, not only demonstrates
before the world his hypocrisy, but he voluntarily undertakes to
prove that he has no personal honor. An honorable man will
sacrifice himself always before he will voluntarily inflict injury
upon a cause he has pledged himself to sustain, and upon men and
women whose good name is in his hands. When a member of a church
has become so hardened in a course of bad living, that no pang
comes to him when he thinks of the injury he is inflicting upon
the Christian church, he is bad enough for a prison. I would not
trust him the length of my arm.
We have had, within the last ten years, too many notable instances
of falls from virtue among the clergy; and every fall has been
like an avalanche. They come from a point so near to heaven, and
fall so far, that mountain-sides are scarred and whole communities
whelmed by the calamity. It takes, often, many years for the
villages that lie at their feet to smile again. All Christendom
feels the shock, and mourns with downcast eyes the consequences. I
freely grant that, as a class, the American clergy, of all
denominations, are the purest and best men whom I know; but I
cannot resist the conviction that there are many of them who
forget what the responsibility is that rests upon them. It was the
remark of an aged clergyman, retired from pulpit duties, that if
he were a layman he should watch with more anxiety and carefulness
than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the
women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that
there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all;
but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is
no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for
their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their
pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall
never be a deed committed that would bring a blush to the most
sensitive cheek; yet a susceptible woman in the society of a
minister of strong and magnetic sympathies, may become as passive
as a babe. Led toward him by her religious nature, attracted and
held by his intellectual power and the graces of his language,
yielding to him her confidence, it is not strange that, before she
is aware, she is a captive without a captor, a victim without an
enemy, a wreck without a destroyer.
Now I know that there is not a pastor of a strong and graceful and
sympathetic nature who reads these words without understanding
what I mean--who does not know that there are women in his
congregation who are, either consciously or unconsciously, the
slaves of his will. I have no doubt that there are some such
pastors who will read this essay with a flush of guilt upon their
faces. They have never meant these women any ill--they would not
harm them for the world--but they are conscious of a selfish and
most unchristianly pleasure in these conquests of female natures--
these parlor triumphs, God forgive them! Perhaps they go further,
and, by the lingering, fervent pressure of a hand, or the glance
of an eye, or the utterance of some bit of gallantry or flattery,
send into a woman's heart an unwomanly and an unchristian thought.
Perhaps they take special delight in the society of some half a
dozen female members of their flock, and find themselves dressing
for them--betraying to them their weaknesses--opening, in various
ways, avenues by which the quick eyes and instincts of these women
can see directly into them. The number of pastors is not small, I
think, who are not aware that there is one woman, or that there
are some women, who know more of what is in them, to their
disadvantage, than any man--that before certain lenient--possibly
sad and forgiving eyes--they stand as men who indulge in
essentially unchristian vanities of purpose and life.
Of all woman-killers in this world, I know of none so disgusting
as one whose chosen profession it is to preach the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. A clerical fop, a ministerial gallant, a man who
preaches the love of God on Sunday, and lays snares for an
innocent heart on Monday afternoon, is a disgrace to Christianity,
and a sad burden to the Christian cause. Does such a man think
that he can add a little zest to a leisure hour and a humdrum
life, by toying with a tender friendship, and giving lease and
latitude to his desire for personal conquest, and yet that no one
shall know it? Ah, the fallacy! I know of eminent clergymen--
earnest workers--who, by yielding to this desire once, have been
shorn of their power for good forever, so far as those are
concerned who really know them and their weakness. There are
ministers in America before whom strong men tremble, and great
congregations bow themselves, who could be laughed to scorn and
smothered in a cloud of blushes, by some girl to whom, in a weak
moment, they betrayed the vain heart that beats within them. Ah!
ye men of the black coat and the white neck-cloth--toying with
women, under whatever disguise; indulging in the vanity of
personal power, however ingeniously you mask it, is not for you.
You can never do it without an injury to the religion which you
profess to preach. If you find that you are too weak to resist
these temptations--and they are great to such as you--then you
should leave the desk forever. You, at least, are bound in
personal honor to quit the public advocacy of a cause which your
private life dishonors.
Easy to preach, you say? Easier to preach than practise? Nobody
knows it better than I--unless it be you. I do not expect perfection
in this world, of anybody;--I do not expect impossibilities of anybody.
But there are certain duties which men owe to humanity and their race,
and which members of Christian churches and teachers of Christian
churches owe to Christianity and to their brotherhood, which are
possible to be performed, and which I insist upon. I do not appeal
to the highest motives--at least I do not appeal to religious motives.
I appeal to personal honor. I say that every man, high or low, is bound
in honor so to conduct himself as not to disgrace humanity--as not to
shake the confidence of men in human honor. I say that every man
who belongs to a Christian church--no matter what his internal life
may be--is bound in honor so to carry himself before men and women,
that the Christian name receive no damage and the Christian cause no
prejudice in their eyes. Every man carries the burden of his race and
his brotherhood; and if he be a man, he will neither ignore it nor try
to shake it off.
LESSON XVIII.
SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS.
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"
SHAKSPEARE.
"I have gnashed
My teeth in darkness till returning morn,
Then cursed myself till sunset; I have prayed
For madness as a blessing; 'tis denied me."
BYRON.
_Alessandra_. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing
Thy happiness--what ails thee, cousin of mine?
Why didst thou sigh so deeply?
"_Castiglione_. Did I sigh?
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
A silly--a most silly fashion I have
When I am _very_ happy. Did I sigh?"
POE.
There is a hill opposite to my window, up which, during all the
long and weary day, horses are drawing heavy loads. The majority
of them crawl patiently along, with their heads down and with
reeking flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the
water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies that
vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short and stumpy
tails to protect their quivering sides. Some of these animals are
not so patient, but are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have
noticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad time every
morning with his first load. He is what the teamsters call
"balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much coaxing and not
a little whipping seem necessary to get him started; and then he
plunges into his work as if he were determined to tear his harness
and his load all in pieces. I notice that there are certain
unusual fixtures about his collar, and learn that the poor animal
has a galled shoulder, so raw and inflamed that all his first
efforts in the morning are attended by pain, and that he only
works well after the flesh has become benumbed by pressure. I ask
his driver why he does not turn the creature into the pasture, and
let the ulcer heal, and am told that he has been treated thus
repeatedly, but that it always returns when labor is resumed.
There is a livery stable that I visit frequently; and while I wait
to be served I notice what the grooms are doing. I see that when
the currycomb or brush touches a certain spot upon the horse's
skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a squeal,--
possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. I learn, too,
that there is a certain place upon the back of every horse that
the grooms are not permitted to bathe with cold water.
These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive spots on horses
have very faithful counterparts in the minds and characters of
men. I do not know that I ever met a man who had not on him,
somewhere, a sore spot, or a tender spot, or a sensitive spot--a
spot that would either gall under the collar of labor, or bring on
hysterics if harshly rubbed, or communicate a damaging shock to
the nervous system when suddenly cooled. Very few men arrive at
thirty-five years of age without getting galled, and very few
entirely recover from the abrasion while they live. The spot never
thoroughly heals, and the old collar only needs to be put on, even
after the longest period of rest, to develop the ulcer in the same
old place. I heard a young clergyman preach recently, and I
instantly learned that he had a sore spot under his collar. He was
a young man of fine powers, bold intellect, a strong love of
freedom, and a will determined to do honor to his convictions. He
had formed his own opinion upon certain points of doctrine, and
had insisted upon it in the presence of his elders. The
consequence was that he had been bitterly opposed, and was with
great difficulty settled over his parish. The screws had been put
tightly down upon him, and he had felt, in the very depths of his
sensitive soul, that the liberty wherewith Christ had made him
free had been tampered with. So he could neither pray nor preach
without showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did not betray
it by refusing to draw at all; but he drew violently, as if he had
been hitched to the leg of an obtuse Doctor of Divinity, and
intended to give all the other Doctors of Divinity notice to get
out of the way. Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is
sure to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, until he
puts on another kind of collar. The same old sting will be in all
his preaching--a tinge of personal feeling--that the masses of
those who hear him preach will not understand, and that he, at
last, will become unconscious of. Ministers have more sore places
under their harnesses than any class of men I know of.
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