Books: Lessons in Life
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Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life
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A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, in his advocacy
of them, has rubbed against the fixed opinions or prejudices of
the people to which he is called to preach, is very sure to get
sore; and he will either wince with the friction or oppose himself
to it with violence. His soreness will always be calling attention
to that which caused it, so that if his wound was procured in the
advocacy of some infernal doctrine like "infant damnation," why,
infant damnation will seem to become a very precious doctrine to
him, and he will always be talking about it, and enforcing it. If
he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or any other
public wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persistently
opposed by any portion of his charge, he will betray the sore
under his collar on all occasions, and very possibly become so
fractious and violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him
out to pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction of any
particular collar seems to feel that it is necessary for him to
wear that particular collar all the time; and he fails to remember
that the reason why he has so much feeling with this collar on, is
that it has made him sore. Not unfrequently he becomes so
sensitive and so nervous that he kicks out of the traces, and runs
away with, and smashes up, the vehicle to which he is attached.
No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and violence of the
advocates of special reforms comes from wearing too long the
collar of the public apathy, or the public contempt. The men are
very few, who, with the consciousness of being actuated by a good
motive, can work against opposition a long time, without getting
sore, and without betraying their soreness, either by stubbornness
or violence. Touch them anywhere but upon the galled spot, and
they will be as calm as clocks, and as good-natured as kittens;
touch them there, and we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and
a nip at the shoulder. Heartless practical jokers understand where
"the raw" is, and know exactly what to say to provoke a galled
man to make a fool of himself.
The conscience is very liable to become sore with friction. One
entire section of the American nation became sore, even to
madness, with working in the collar of the world's condemnation.
The slave States of America were very comfortable with slavery so
long as they could hold it with self-respect, and so long as the
world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with
condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened
and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they
became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag
between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to
relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and
philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces
for materials with which to soften the cushion, and set the
Christian church to making padding. Every thing failing to produce
the desired result, and relieve them of their pain, they refused
to draw their portion of the national load, kicked the Union in
pieces, and ran away. They will never be happy again until slavery
is abolished, or the attitude of the nation and of the world
towards slavery is changed. This sore under the collar will never
heal, either in or out of the Union, until the cause shall in some
way be removed.
It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A man cannot long
wear a collar that presses upon his conscience, without getting
through the skin--down upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor
to his neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for it,
or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his conscience
has a raw place upon it, and that it gives him trouble. When a
woman takes particular pains to tell me that she is exceedingly
economical, and that she really has had nothing for a year, I
cannot but conclude that she has been making some expenditure, or
some series of expenditures, that she knows she cannot afford, and
that there is a raw place upon her conscience in consequence. In
truth, I have never known a woman who wished to impress me with a
sense of her rigid economy, who was not more anxious to convince
herself of it than me. When a man undertakes to soften the
character of any crime by apologies, and by arguments, it is
invariably for the purpose of relieving its pressure upon a galled
conscience, or shaping it to a different place. I am afraid the
men are few who have escaped a galled spot upon their consciences.
Pride has had a terrible time of it in the world. It is, perhaps,
the most sensitive spot in human nature. Collars, curry-combs, and
cold water have alike served to torment it. A great multitude of
men and women have been obliged to work in the collar of poverty,
against a galled pride, during all their life. They never start in
the morning without flinching, and never work without violence,
until their pride has become entirely benumbed by pressure. Ah! if
society could be unveiled, how few would be found with pride free
from scars and raw places! I once heard a simple boy tell a young
man that his legs were crooked; and though the lad was very
innocent, and only supposed that he had made and announced a
pleasant discovery, he had, alas! hit the man's pride on the very
centre of its soreness and sensitiveness. One never knows, in
large things, where he will hit the sensitive places in the pride
of those he meets; but in little things he is pretty sure to learn
it concerning everybody. It is always safe to suppose that a very
small man is sore on the subject of bodily dimensions. It will
never do for a tall man to propose to measure altitude with him in
the presence of women. It is never safe to inquire the age of any
lady whom one knows to be more than twenty-five years old. There
is not one man or woman in a hundred who possesses an unpleasant
personal peculiarity, without getting a galled spot upon personal
pride in consequence. A long nose, a squint eye, a clumsy foot, a
low forehead, a hump in the back--any one of these will not bear
mention in the presence of its possessor.
It is quite amusing to witness the various methods resorted to for
cheating the world with regard to these sore places in personal
pride. Men who are conscious that they do not possess a particle of
musical taste, and are really ignorant of the difference between
Dundee and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be "very fond of music,"
and will not unfrequently convince themselves that they are so. Men
who are exceedingly sensitive touching any eccentricities of person,
will be constantly joking about their own long noses, or red hair,
or big feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of way,
and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the matter were
exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is
very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has passed her hour
of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient
maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration,
about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their
lot--determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the
surface of her personal pride. The trick of keeping up the
appearances of wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one;
and though if rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted in to
the end of time. It is often very pitiful to witness the ingenuity
of the efforts that are made to cover from public observation the
soreness of personal pride, caused by a change of circumstances.
The Hepsibah Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables.
There is probably no harness so apt to gall the shoulder of personal
pride as that of ambition. The number of men in the world whose
personal pride has a sore on it, inflicted by disappointed ambition,
is sadly large. I have seen many a worthy man utterly spoiled by his
failure to reach the political, social, or literary eminence at
which he has aimed. Thenceforward, his hand has been against every
man, and he has imagined that every man's hand has been against him.
All who contributed to his defeat, and all in any way associated
with them, have become the subjects of his hatred and his
animadversion. He has retired into himself, sneering at every
thing and everybody, doubtful of the sincerity of all friendly
professions, and regarding himself as "a passenger," while the
poor fools among whom he once so gladly numbered himself, chase
the baubles by which his life has been so miserably cheated of its
meed. It is very hard for a proud man, with a strong will, to
feel that he has been baffled and beaten; and a really noble man,
defeated in his objects by trickery and meanness, will sometimes
become half insane with the wound which his pride has received. He
will never forget it; and the old sore can never be touched, even
in the most accidental way, without calling the fire into his eye,
and the color into his cheek. In the domain of politics, "sore
heads" notoriously abound, and I suppose they always will.
Literary life is probably as prolific of failures, and as full of
"sore heads" as political. The number of men and women who are
ambitious of literary distinction, and who make great efforts to
win it, is very large--larger than the world outside of the
publisher's private office dreams of. The number of manuscripts
rejected and never published is greater than the number published;
and of those which are published, not one in ten satisfies, in its
success, the ambition of its author. I suppose that it is within
the bounds of truth to say that nine authors in every ten are
disappointed men--men whose personal pride is wounded, who believe
that the world has treated them unjustly, and who cherish a sore
spot on their personal pride as long as they live. Some of these
refuse to draw in any harness, and give themselves up to poverty
and laziness, as the victims of the world's undiscriminating
stupidity. Some become critics of the works of successful authors,
and take their revenge in the hearty abuse of their betters.
Others enter into other departments of effort, but carry with them
through life the belief that they are out of their place, and the
conviction that if they had been born in a nobler age they would
have been recognized as the geniuses they imagine themselves to
be.
There is still another class which get sore with drawing in a
harness that God puts upon them, and in the adoption of which they
have had nothing to do. A man of poetic sensibilities finds himself
engaged in the pursuit of some humdrum calling. He sees how
beautiful poetry is; he feels its influence upon his soul; but
he has no power to create it. Another feels something of the
divinity of music, but muscular facility has been denied to him so
that he cannot play, and his voice is harsh or feeble so that he
cannot sing. He melts and glows under the sway of eloquence, and
worships at a distance the power of the orator over the hearts and
minds of men; but he knows that if he were in the orator's place,
he would break down and become the object even of his own
contempt. Great susceptibilities these people have--passive
spirits--open to all good impressions, appreciative of that which
is best in nature and art, yet without the power to act. They must
always be plates to receive the picture, and never suns and
cameras to imprint it. They must always live within sight of great
and beautiful powers, but never have the privilege of wielding
them. Doomed to the attitude of receptivity, they see that they
can never change it; and that they can never be to others what
others are to them. Thus they grow sore with the thought of their
weakness, and a sense of the circumscription of their faculties.
They see wonderful things--they apprehend the grace and the glory
of great actions--but they can achieve nothing. Many of these walk
as in a dream through life--with a sense of wings upon their
shoulders, clipped or lashed down. They see their companions
rising, but they cling to the earth, and feel the difference as a
humiliation. Alas! how many souls chafe against the consciousness
of inferior powers, till even the fine susceptibilities with which
nature endowed them are destroyed!
There would seem to be no end of the causes which produce sore and
tender and sensitive spots upon the human soul. I have said
nothing of grief and love and pity and anger, and a whole brood of
powerful passions, but they are all operative toward the results
which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive sores is
obvious enough. I would prescribe for a man as I would for a
horse--go out to pasture, or adopt another kind of collar, and
never wear the old one again. If a man has become sore by working
against the apathy, the misconceptions, the misconstructions, and
the prejudices of the world, so that he feels the galling burden
of the collar in all his actions, let him change his style of
labor until the ulcer heal. If the conscience becomes sore,
relieve it of that which made it sore, and never believe that
padding can effect a cure. Even wounded pride will heal if we let
it alone, and refrain from opening the wound on all occasions, and
rubbing it against the causes which inflicted it. All the natural
peculiarities of our constitution which wound our pride may be
happily got along with by ignoring them. If my neighbor is a
lovable man, I do not love him any the less because he wears a
long nose, and I should never think of it if he were not always
joking about it, and trying to convince me that it did not offend
him. A man who quarrels with his own constitution, and questions
the benevolence that adjusted it to its conditions, quarrels with,
and questions, his Maker. I believe there are no sorenesses of the
sort we are considering which time or change will not heal.
It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man to carry a mental
ulcer with him through life--to feel its prick and pang in every
effort--to be conscious of its presence every hour--to be engaged in
covering it from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with
regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to be spoiled by a
little sore, or a large one, when there exists an obvious mode of
cure. It is our immense and intense self-consciousness that stands
in our way always in this matter. The truth is that the world does
not think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A man may
walk through the city of New York with a face "as homely as a
hedge-fence," thinking about it all the time, and wondering what
people think of it, and not a man of all the throng will even see
it. It is so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, our
personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our personal affairs
generally possess very little interest for others. They have enough
to do in taking care of themselves, and have weaknesses, and
failures, and peculiarities enough of their own; and if the world
should spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it go.
It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over it. When a man truly
learns how little important he is in the world, he is generally
beyond the danger of becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may
be.
LESSON XIX.
THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE.
"Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things,
and keep the ordinances as I delivered them unto you."--ST. PAUL.
"O popular applause! What heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?"
COWPER.
"_Arbaces_. Why now, you flatter.
"_Mardonius_. I never understood the word."
A KING AND NO KING.
"Praising what is lost
Makes the remembrance dear." SHAKSPEARE.
It is pleasant to be praised. The man does not live who is
insensible to honest praise. The love of approbation is as natural
to every human soul as the love of offspring, or the love of
liberty. It was planted there by God's hand, and it is as useful
and important in its fruit, as it is fragrant and beautiful in its
flower. I repeat that the man does not live who is insensible to
honest praise. That great orator who seems to be a king in the
world, independent of his race, holding dominion over human
hearts, lifted far above the necessity of the plaudits of those
around him, will pause with gratified and grateful ear, to listen
to expressions of approval and admiration from the humblest lips.
The greatest mind drinks praise as a pleasant draught, if it be
honest and deserved. Perhaps you think that Doctor of Divinity who
weighs two hundred pounds more or less, and is clad in glossy
broad-cloth, and lifts his shining forehead above a white cravat,
as Mont Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated
thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted spectacles, and
moves among men with ineffable dignity, is above the need of, and
the appetite for, praise. Ah! you don't know the soft old heart
under that satin waistcoat! It can be made as warm and gentle and
grateful, with just and generous praise, as that of a boy. Nay,
the barber who takes his reverent nose between his thumb and
finger, and sweeps the beard from his benevolent chin, understands
exactly what to say in order to draw from his pocket an extra
sixpence. There is no head so high, there is no neck so stiff,
there is no back so straight, that it will not bend to take the
flowers which praise tosses upon its path.
"It's a sign of weakness, after all," sighs my friend, who is not
praised quite as much as he would like to be. Begging your pardon,
sir, it is no such thing. The strongest Being in the universe--
the God of the universe--is the one who demands, receives, and
accepts the most praise. Listen for a moment to those marvellous
ascriptions which rise to Him from the bosom of Christendom as
ceaselessly and beautifully as clouds from the Heaven-reflecting
ocean: "Thou art the King, immortal, invisible. Thou art the
Source of all life, the Author of all being, the Fountain of all
light and love and joy. Thou art Love itself; Thou art the Sum of
all perfections. For what Thou art, we worship Thee; for what Thou
hast done for us, in Thy infinite loving-kindness, we praise Thee.
We bless Thy Holy Name. We call upon our souls and all within us
to magnify Thy name forever and ever." The Bible itself has given
us almost numberless forms of expression into which we may cast
our divinest adoration, and the broadest outpourings of our
hearts. The poets of all ages have been touched to their finest
utterances in the rapture of worship and of praise.
Now why should God want praise of us? It certainly is not because
He is weak. Can it be because He wishes by means of it to produce
some desired effect in us? Is there no hearing of this praise in
Heaven? Are we who sing and shout mere brawlers, who get a little
strength of lungs by the exercise? There are some poor souls,
doubtless, who believe this, as they believe that prayer has
significance only as a moral exercise, and effect only as it
reacts upon the soul. I believe that praise is pleasant to Him who
sits upon the throne--that the honest and sincere expressions of
love and adoration, and gratitude and praise, that rise to Him
from the earth are at least shining ripples upon the soundless
ocean of His bliss. Out from Him proceed, through myriad channels
of effluence, the expressions of His love for those whom He has
made and endowed with intelligence; and I believe that it is
requisite for His happiness that back along these lines of
manifestation there should flow a tide of grateful recognition and
adoring praise. Even a God would pine in loneliness and despair if
there should come back no echoes to His loving voice--no refluent
wave to the mighty bosom which makes all shores vocal with its
breath and beating. God demands of all men that which all men owe
to Him--that which His perfections and His acts deserve.
This love of approbation in men, then, is Heaven-born and Godlike.
The desire for approbation is as legitimate as the desire for
food. I do not suppose that it should be greatly a motive of
action--perhaps it should never be; but when a man from a good
motive does a good thing, he desires the approval of the hearts
that love him, and he receives their expressions of praise with
grateful pleasure. Nay, if these expressions of praise are denied
to him, he feels in a certain sense wronged. He feels that
justice has not been done him--that there is something due to him
that has not been paid. I met a friend the other day who unveiled
his heart to me; and I caught in the vision his heart's sense of
the world's injustice. He had been a very poor boy, and had been
bred under a poor boy's disadvantages; but a strong will, a good
heart, fine talents, and a favoring fortune, brought to him gold,
and lands, and equipage. They brought these not only, but they
brought the power to be a benefactor of his native town. He won
competence for himself, and then he became a public-spirited
citizen, and did that for his home which no other man had done.
Now he felt that he had done for himself and for those around him
nobly; and it was natural that he should desire some response--
some expression of praise. He did not get it. People either envied
him, or they misconstrued his actions; and he felt that his
townsmen had been and were unjust---that they owed him something
which they had failed to pay.
The world is so much accustomed to confound praise with flattery
that if I were to go to a man with an honest tribute like this:
"My friend, I admire you very much; I think you possess noble
talents, fine tastes, and an excellent heart; and I regard your
course of action and your life with the warmest approval," he
would, nine times in ten, look into my face either with
astonishment, or amusement, or offense. He would not know whether
I intended to insult him or to practice a joke upon him. Praise
between man and man is so rare that we neither know how to bestow
it nor how to receive it. This is carried to such an extent that
one-half of the family life of Christendom is deprived of it. The
husbands who never have a word of praise for their wives, the
wives who never have a word of praise for their husbands, and the
parents who only find fault with their children, are, I fear, in
the majority. I know that the women are numberless who devote
themselves throughout all their life to the comfort, the
happiness, and the prosperity of their husbands, and who lie down
in their graves at last, thirsty for their praise. Their patient
and ceaseless ministry is taken as a matter of course, without the
slightest recognition of its value as the expression of a loving
and devoted heart. Now I believe that praise is due to the love
and unselfish devotion of a wife, just as really as it is to the
loving-kindness and beneficent ministry of God, differing only in
kind and degree. Husbands may die worth millions, and leave it all
to their wives, (subject to the usual contemptible provision that
they do not marry again,) and yet be shamefully indebted to them
forever and forever.
Children are often spoiled because they get no credit for what
they do. Of censure, they get their due; but of praise, never.
They do a thing which they feel to be praiseworthy, but it is not
noticed. When a child takes pains to do well, it feels itself paid
for every endeavor by praise; and the most unsophisticated child
knows when praise is its due. It often comes to its mother's knee
in natural simplicity, and asks for it. It is very well for men to
say that "virtue is its own reward," and that the highest
satisfactions are those which spring from a sense of duty
accomplished; but praise is pleasant and precious to men who not
only say this, but feel it. Many a noble and sensitive pastor is
disheartened because no one of the multitude which he so carefully
and constantly feeds, ever tells him, with an open, honest
utterance, his good opinion of him, and his satisfaction with his
labors. Many an excellent author toils over his work in secret
distrust, and issues it in fear and trembling, feeling that a word
of praise will exalt him into a grateful and fruitful joy, and
that an unjust and unkind criticism will half kill him.
It is true that the mind is unhealthy which lives on praise; and
it is just as true that he is mean and unjust who fails to award
praise to those who earn it. The appetite for praise may become
just as morbid and greedy by improper stimulus and abuse, as any
other natural and legitimate appetite. It frequently does so, in
those who associate it very intimately with success and gain.
Actors and public singers, and all those whose success in life and
whose pecuniary income depend upon the amount of popular praise
they can win, are very apt to become greedy of praise, and will
not unfrequently receive it in its most disgusting forms. There
are lecturers and public speakers who depend upon praise for
strength to speak an hour--men who, if their performances are
repetitions, wait at certain points for applause, as a horse,
travelling over a familiar road, stops always at certain hills to
rest and take breath, and at certain wayside cisterns to drink.
Many of these men demand praise, talking about themselves
continually, and begging assent to their self-laudations. In these
cases, praise becomes the dominant motive, and degrades and
belittles its subjects always. The voluntary profanity and the
impure jests that so often offend the ears of decent people at the
theatre, are put forth to call out a cheer from groundlings whose
praise is always essential disgrace. The jealousy and the
quarrelsomeness of authors, actors, and singers, result from the
fact that praise has become so much the motive of their life that
they grudge the applause awarded to their fellows.
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