Books: Lessons in Life
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Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life
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Here we find one man pitying his poor, dumb, unconscious
companion, and the little dog that trots in to attend the morning
prayers, because their life is so brief, and, more particularly,
because it is so insignificant. He recognizes the feeble likeness
between himself and them, and appreciates also the tremendous
difference. He does not think that he would be glad to exchange
his lot of labor and care for their carelessness and content, but,
reaching forward to grasp the hand of an immortal destiny, he
sorrows that he must leave his dumb servants and companions behind
him.
And this is the normal view of the question. We rise out of
semi-conscious infancy into a life of the senses, which goes on to
perfection in our childhood. We come into a state in which the
mechanism of the body enjoys its freest play, in which the senses
imbibe their sweetest satisfactions, and in which life either
swells into irrepressible overflowings, or subsides into careless
content. Looking at her children at this period of their life,
many a mother has said, "Let them play while they can; let them be
merry while they may; for they are seeing their happiest days."
But this animal life is not all. In its perfection it is very
beautiful, and it is good because God made it; but it is only the
coarse basis upon which rises a shaft, whiter than marble--wrought
with divine devices--crowned by the light of Heaven. It is only
those who have failed to secure a distinct perception of the
highest aspect of human life, and of that which makes it
characteristically human life, who can say to a child that he is
seeing his happiest days.
I remember with entire distinctness the moment when the
consciousness possessed me that my childhood was transcended by
initial manhood, and I can never forget the pang that moment
brought me. It was on a bright, moonlight night, in midwinter,
when my mates, boisterous with life, were engaged in their usual
games in the snow, and I had gone out expecting to share in their
enjoyment. I had not played, or rather tried to play, five
minutes, before I found that there was nothing in the play for me--
that I had absolutely exhausted play as the grand pursuit of my
life. Never since has the wild laugh of boyhood sounded so vacant
and hollow, as it did to me that night. In an instant, the
invisible line was crossed which separated a life of purely animal
enjoyment from a life of moral motive and responsibility, and
intellectual action and enterprise. The old had passed away, and I
had entered that which was new; and I turned my steps homeward,
leaving behind me all my companions, to spend a quiet evening in
the chimney-corner, and dream of the realm that was opening before
me. Such a moment as this comes really, though not always
consciously, to every man and woman. To-day we are children;
to-morrow we are not. To-day we stand in life's vestibule;
to-morrow we are in the temple, awed by the sweep of the arches
over us, humbled by the cross that fronts us, and smitten with
mysteries that breathe upon us from the choir, or gaze at us from
the flaming windows.
Manhood and womanhood have their infancy entirely distinct from
the infancy of childhood. The child is born into the world a
simple, animal life--less helpful than a lamb, or a calf, or a
kitten. There is no power in it, and but little of instinct. There
is no form of life, bursting caul or shell, that awakes in vital
air to such stupid, vacant helplessness, as a baby. It is out of
this lump of clay, with its bones only half hardened, and its
muscles little more than pulp, and its brain no more intelligent
than an uncooked dumpling, that childhood is to be made. And this
childhood consists of little more than a well-developed animal
organism. Nature keeps the child playing--makes it play in the
open air--impels it to bring into free and joyous use all the
powers of its little frame--and when that is done, and the
procreative faculty has crowned all, the child is born again, and
comes into a new infancy--the infancy of manhood and womanhood.
Here a new life opens. That which gave satisfaction before, gives
satisfaction no longer. Love takes new and deeper channels.
Ambition fixes its eye upon other and higher objects. Fresh
motives address the soul, and urge it into new enterprises. Great
cares and responsibilities settle slowly down upon its shoulders,
and it braces itself up to endure them. It apprehends God and its
relations to Him, and to its fellows; it confronts destiny; it
arms itself for the conflicts of life; it prepares for the
struggle which it knows will issue in a grateful success or a sad
disappointment; in short, it grows from man's infancy into man's
full estate.
Now the reason why a mother looks with a sigh upon her children,
and says that they are seeing the happiest days of their life, is
that she has never become a true woman. She has never grown out of
the infancy of her womanhood. She has never comprehended what a
glorious thing it is to be a woman--she has not comprehended what
it is to be a woman at all. What can be that woman's ideas of
life, who thinks and declares that the happiest moments of her
experience were those which were filled with the frolic of animal
life? If I felt like this, I should wish that my children had been
born rabbits, or squirrels, or lambs, or kittens, because they,
having enjoyed the pleasures of the animal, will never awake to
the woes of another type of life. The real reason why any man
sings from the heart,
"O, would I were a boy again,"
is, that he is "stuck"--to use a homely but expressive word--
between boyhood and manhood, and, not feeling up to his position,
has a very strong disposition to back out of it. The man who
really wishes he were a boy, is either painfully conscious of the
loss of the purity of his boyhood, or he has the cowardly
disposition to shirk the responsibilities of his life. The
romantic regard which we all entertain for the simple animal
content and joy of childhood, is a very different thing to this.
It was Mr. Neal's loafer that really wished he were a pig; and it
is a loafer always who would retire from man's duties and estate,
into the content either of childhood or kittenhood.
It is very natural that a man should be blinded and pained by
passing from a shaded room into dazzling sunlight. It is a serious
thing to leap from a luxurious, enervating warm bath into cold
water. All sudden transitions are shocking; and God has contrived
the transitions of our lives so that they shall be mainly gradual.
It is not to be wondered at that many men and women, by having
the responsibilities of men and women thrust upon them too early,
are shocked, and look back upon the shady places they have left,
and long to rest their eyes there. It is not strange that men
recoil from a plunge into the world's cold waters, and long to
creep back into the bath from which they have suddenly risen. But
that man or woman, having fully passed into the estate of man and
woman, should desire to become children again, is impossible. It
is only the half-developed, the badly-developed, the imperfectly
nurtured, the mean-spirited, and the demoralized, who look back to
the innocence, the helplessness, and the simple animal joy and
content of childhood with genuine regret for their loss. I want no
better evidence that a person's life is regarded by himself as a
failure, than that furnished by his honest willingness to be
restored to his childhood. When a man is ready to relinquish
the power of his mature reason, his strength and skill for
self-support, the independence of his will and life, his bosom
companion and children, his interest in the stirring affairs of
his time, his part in deciding the great questions which agitate
his age and nation, his intelligent apprehension of the relations
which exist between himself and his Maker, and his rational hope
of immortality--if he have one--for the negative animal content,
and frivolous enjoyments of a child, he does not deserve the name
of a man;--he is a weak, unhealthy, broken-down creature, or a
base poltroon.
Yet I know there are those who will read this sentence with tears,
and with complaint. I know there are those whose existence has
been a long struggle with sickness and trial--whose lives have
been crowded with great griefs and disappointments--who sit in
darkness and impotency while the world rolls by them. They have
seen no joy and felt no content since childhood, and many of them
look with genuine pity upon children, because the careless
creatures do not know into what a heritage of sin and sorrow they
are entering. I have only to say to them, that the noblest
exhibitions of manhood and womanhood I have ever seen, or the
world has ever seen, have been among their number. A woman with
the hope of heaven in her eyes, incorruptible virtue in her heart,
and honesty in every endeavor, has smiled serenely, a million
times in this world, while her life and all its earthly
expectations were in ruins. Patient sufferers upon beds of pain
have forgotten childhood years ago, and, feeding their souls on
prayer, have looked forward with unutterable joy to the transition
from womanhood to angelhood. Men, utterly forsaken by friends--
contemned, derided, proscribed, persecuted--have stood by their
convictions with joyful heroism and calm content. Nay, great
multitudes have marched with songs upon their tongues to the rack
and the stake. The noblest spectacle the world affords is that of
a man or woman, rising superior to sorrow and suffering--
transforming sorrow and suffering into nutriment--accepting those
conditions of their life which Providence prescribes, and building
themselves up into an estate from whose summit the step is short
to a glorified humanity.
Before me hangs the portrait of an old man--the only man I ever
loved with a devotion that has never faded, though long years have
passed away since he died. His calm blue eyes look down upon me,
and I look into them, and through them I look into a golden
memory--into a life of self-denial--into a meek, toiling, honest,
heroic Christian manhood--into an uncomplaining spirit--into a
grateful heart--into a soul that never sighed over a lost joy,
though all his earthly enterprises miscarried. The tracery of care
and of sickness is upon his haggard features, but I see in them,
and in the soul which they represent to me, the majesty of
manliness. While I look, the kittens still play at the door, and
the noise of shouting children is in the street; but ah! how
shallow is the life they represent, compared with that of which
this dumb canvas tells me! It is better to be a man or a woman,
than to be a child. It is better to be an angel than to be either.
Let us look forward--never backward.
LESSON IV.
REPRODUCTION IN KIND.
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
ST. PAUL TO THE GALATIANS.
"Ye shall know them by their fruits: Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles?" ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL.
It was fitting that one of the most characteristic and beautiful
laws of life should be announced in the opening chapter of the
Holy Bible. It was clothed in the form of an ordinance, as became
it: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind,
and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, after his kind."
From that day to this, every living thing--beast, bird and insect,
tree, shrub and plant--has produced after its kind. It is a law
that runs through all animal and vegetable life. Each family in
the great world of living forms was created for a special purpose,
and was intended to remain pure and distinctive until the
termination of its mission. Whenever the family boundaries are
overstepped, the curse of nature is breathed upon the generative
functions, and the illegitimate product dies out, or subsides into
hopeless degeneration. The mule is a monster, and has no progeny.
A plant, or a tree, never forgets itself. Cheat it of its root,
and the stem remains faithful. The minutest twig, put out to nurse
upon the arm of a foreign mother, feels the thrill of the great
primal law in its filmiest fibre, and breathes in every expression
of its life its fidelity. If you will walk with me into the
garden, I will show you a mountain-ash in full bloom; but on the
top of it you will see a strange little cluster of pear-blossoms.
A twig from a Seckel pear-tree was, two or three years since,
engrafted there. It had a hard time in uniting its being to that
of the alien ash, but it loved life, and so, at length, it
consented to join itself to the transplanted forest tree. It was
weak and alone, but it kept its law. Spring bathed the ash with
its own peculiar bloom, and autumn hung it with its clusters of
scarlet berries, and it was hidden from sight by the redundant
foliage, but it kept its law. The roots of the mountain-ash,
blindly reaching in the ground and imbibing its juices, knew
nothing of the little orphaned twig above, that waited for its
food; but they could not cheat it of its law. Up to a certain
point of a certain bough the rising fluids came under the law of
the mountain-ash, and there they found a gateway, guarded by an
angel that gave them a new commandment. "Thus far--mountain-ash:
beyond--Seckel pear;" and if, in October, you will walk in the
garden again with me, I will show you among the scarlet berries,
bending heavily toward you, the clustered succulence of the
Seckel.
A seedsman may cheat you, but a seed never does. If you plant
corn, it never comes up potatoes. If you sow wheat, it never comes
up rye. Wrapped up in every capsule, bound up in every kernel,
packed into every minutest germ, is this law, written by God at
the beginning, "Produce thou after thy kind." So the whole living
world goes on producing after its kind. Year after year we visit
the seedsman, and read the labels on his drawers and packages, and
bear home and plant in our gardens the little homely germs that
keep God's law so well; and summer rewards our trust in them with
beautiful flowers, and autumn with bountiful fruition. Robins sang
the same song to the Pilgrim Fathers that they sing to us. The
may-flower breathes the same fragrance now that it breathed in the
fingers of Rose Standish; and man and woman, producing after their
kind, are the same to-day that they were three thousand years ago.
Now there is a significance in all the laws of material life,
above and beyond their special office. They do the work they were
set to do; they rule the life they were appointed to rule; but the
laws, themselves, belong to a family whose branches run through
all intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. Laws live in groups
no less uniformly than the existences which they inform and
govern. It is a law, both of animal and vegetable structures, that
they shall grow by what they feed on; but this law passes the
bounds of matter, and finds its widest meaning and its most
extended application beyond. The mind grows by what it feeds on;
the heart grows by what it feeds on; love, hate, jealousy,
revenge, fortitude, courage, grow by what they feed on;
spirituality grows by what spirituality feeds on. Wherever growth
goes, through all the realm of God, this law goes; and the law
that every thing that produces shall produce after its kind, is
just as universal as this. It begins in material life, and runs up
through all life. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that it begins in
spiritual life, and seeks embodiment in material life, so that we
may apprehend it. The clouds were in heaven before there was any
rain, and the rain comes down from heaven to tell us what the
clouds are made of. I might go further, and say that every form,
of matter is but the embodiment of a divine thought, and that,
with that thought, there passes into matter the laws that reside
in divine things of corresponding nature and office.
But I am becoming abstruse--quite too much so, considering the
simple, practical truths to which I am seeking to introduce my
reader. I have been thinking how, in accordance with this law of
which we are talking, our moods, our passions, our sympathies, our
moral frames and conditions, reproduce themselves, after their
kind, in the minds and lives around us. I call my child to my knee
in anger; I strike him a hasty blow that carries with it the
peculiar sting of anger; I speak a loud reproof that bears with it
the spirit of anger; and I look in vain for any relenting in his
flashing eyes, flushed face, and compressed lips. I have made my
child angry, and my uncontrolled passion has produced after its
kind. I have sown anger, and I have reaped anger instantaneously.
Perhaps I become still more angry, in consequence of the passion
manifested by my child, and I speak and strike again. He is weak
and I am strong; but, though he bow his head, crushed into
silence, I may be sure that there is a sullen heart in the little
bosom, and anger the more bitter because it is impotent. I put the
child away from me, and think of what I have done. I am full of
relentings. I long to ask his pardon, for I know that I have
offended and deeply injured one of Christ's little ones. I call
him to me again, press his head to my breast, kiss him, and weep.
No word is spoken, but the little bosom heaves, the little heart
softens, the little eyes grow tenderly penitent, the little hands
come up and clasp my neck, and my relentings and my sorrow have
produced after their kind. The child is conquered, and so am I.
If I utter fretful words, they come back to me like echoes. If I
bristle all over with irritability, the quills will begin to rise
all about me. One thoroughly irritable person in a breakfast-room
spoils coffee and toast, sours milk, and destroys appetite for a
whole family. He produces after his kind.
Generally, a man has around him those who are like him. If he be a
man of strong nature and positive qualities, he will plant his
moods and grow them in the natures next to him. Of course there
must be exceptions to this rule, because the will is free and man
is reasonable, and the motive and power to pluck up unwelcome
seed, and unpleasant growths, inheres in all men. I have known a
good-natured man to live with a pettish, ill-natured, jealous,
fault-finding wife through all the years of my acquaintance with
him, he meantime growing no worse, and she growing no better. They
had voluntarily and effectually shut themselves each from the
influence of the other. He had closed his spirit against that
which was bad in her, and she had closed her spirit against that
which was good in him; so she went on fretting through life, and
he very good-naturedly laughing at her. We see this thing through
all society. We see innocent girls grow up into virtue, though
surrounded on every side by vicious example. We see natures and
characters everywhere which refuse to receive the seed that falls
upon them from the natures and characters of others; but this
makes nothing against the universality of the law we are
considering. Generally, I repeat, a man has around him those who
are like him. The soil of a social circle is usually open, and
whatever falls into it produces after its kind, whether it be good
nature or ill nature, purity or impurity, faith or skepticism,
love or hate.
It would appear, therefore, that there is no way by which we can
surround ourselves by good society so readily as by being good
ourselves. If we plant good seed, we may calculate with a great
degree of certainty upon securing good fruit. If I plant frankness
and open-heartedness, I expect to reap them; and I have no right
to expect to reap them unless I plant them. If I go to a man with
my heart in my hand, I have good reason for expecting to meet a
man with his heart in his hand. Frankness begets frankness, just
as naturally and just as certainly, under the proper conditions,
as like produces like in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There
are men who do every thing by indirection who meet one as warily
as if words were traps; and pitfalls who manage a friendly
interview as a general would manage a campaign; and if they make
their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We
unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant distrust and
secretiveness, and they produce in us after their kind. No man can
be treated frankly in this world unless he himself be frank. If we
would win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in
others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that which stands
before it.
The young naturally take on the moods and accept and reflect the
influences around them more readily than the old, just as a new
piece of land will produce a better crop than one which is worn or
pre-occupied. A virgin mind is like a virgin soil. It contains all
the elements of fertility, and is adapted to the production of any
crop. It has been exhausted in no department of its constitution.
It is not occupied by roots, and shaded by foliage. It is not
turf-bound and dry; but it is soft and open, and clean and moist,
and ready for the reception of any seed that may fall upon it.
Until age brings individuality, the mind seems to have little
choice as to what it will receive. Then, indeed, it does reject
much seed that falls upon it, and much fails to take root because
of the pre-occupation of the surface. A sensual seed is planted in
the soul of a young man, and it springs up readily, and produces
after its kind; but the same seed tossed upon an older soil fails
to sink and germinate, because the surface is pre-occupied, or,
more frequently, because that peculiar element on which the germ
must rely for quickening and sustentation has been exhausted. Some
manly or Christian grace falls upon a young mind, and quickly
strikes root and rises into flower and fruit; while the same grace
thrown upon an adult mind would fail to reach the soil, through
the vices that cumber and choke it. It is thus that home and the
school-room are literally seminaries--places where seed is sown--
and it is in these that we expect and intend that every seed shall
produce after its kind. Let us talk about this a little.
I once heard a person say that one of his acquaintances, whom he
named, had no moral right to have a child. Why was this harsh
judgment uttered? Because he was hereditarily scrofulous, and
would necessarily entail upon his offspring the family taint. If
there were even a show of justice in this, what must be said of a
parent who does not possess a single moral quality, that even he,
in the selfishness of his parental love, would desire to see
implanted in his child? How many homes are scattered over
Christendom in which no good seed is sown! How many selfish,
niggardly, vicious parents are there, who, producing after their
kind, by generation and by influence, are filling the world with
selfish, niggardly, and vicious children! How many homes are there
in which the gentle words of love are never heard; in which the
tender graces of a Christian heart are never unfolded; in which a
prayer is never uttered! How many fathers are there whose lips are
black with profanity and foul with obscenity, and whose lives are
mean and unwholesome! How many mothers are there whose tongues are
nimble with scandal and bitter with scolding, and whose brains are
busy with vanities and jealousies! Ah! if there be any man or
woman in this world who has no moral right to have a child, it is
one who has not a single trait of character desirable to be
reproduced in a child. Scrofula may be bad, but sin is worse.
Bodily taint may be terrible, but spiritual taint is horrible.
It is a general truth, under the law that every thing produces
after its kind, that children become what their parents are. A
simple people, virtuous and healthy, will produce virtuous,
healthy, and true-hearted children, A luxurious people--lazy,
sensual, wasteful--will produce children like themselves. If we go
through the vicious quarters of a great city, where licentiousness
and drunkenness and beastly vices prevail, we shall find that
though all die before old age, the communities are abundantly
recruited by the children which they produce. Men, principles,
habits, ideas, vices, all have children, whose features betray
their parentage; so that no parent has a right to expect a child
to be better than its father and mother. On the contrary, he has
every reason to believe that every thing that a child sees wrong
in the parents, will be imitated. There is no way by which bad
parents can bring up a family well. There must be in the parental
life good principles, a sweet and equable temper, a tender and
loving disposition, a firm self-control, a pleasant deportment,
and a conscientious devotion to duty, or these will not be found
in the life of the children. Bad seed, sown in the quick soil of a
child's mind, is sure to spring up, and to bear fruit after its
kind. No sensible man ever dreams of gathering figs from thistles,
or grapes from bramble-bushes, and no man has the slightest right
to suppose that he can bring up a family to be better than he is.
The plant will be true to the seed.
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