The Enthusiasm of Friendship

VIII

The Enthusiasm of FriendshipToC

Destiny is determined by friendship. Fortune is made or marred when the youth selects his companions. Friendship has ever been the master-passion ruling the forum, the court, the camp. The power of love is God-breathed, and life has nothing like love for majesty and beauty. Civilization itself is more of the heart than of the mind. As an eagle cannot rise with one wing, so the soul ascends borne up equally by reason and affection. Plato found the measure of greatness in a man's capacity for exalted friendship. All the great ones of history stand forth as unique in some master passion as in their intellectual supremacy. Witness David and Jonathan, with love surpassing the love of women. Witness Socrates and his group of immortal friends. Witness Dante and his deathless love for Beatrice. Witness Tennyson and his refrain for Arthur Hallam. Witness the disciples and Christ, with "love as strong as death."

Sweetness is not more truly the essence of music than is love the very soul of a deep, strong, harmonious manhood. Friendship cheers like a sunbeam; charms like a good story; inspires like a brave leader; binds like a golden chain; guides like a heavenly vision. To love alone is it given to wrestle victoriously with death.

Lord Bacon said: "He who loves solitude is either a wild beast or a god." The normal man is gregarious. He wants companionship. The very cattle go in herds. The fishes go in shoals. The bees go in swarms. And men come together in families and cities. As men go up toward greatness their need of friendship increases. No mind of the first order was ever a hermit. Modern literature enshrines the friendships of the great and makes them memorable. While letters last, society will never forget Charles Lamb and his companions; Dr. Johnson and his immortal group; Petrarch and his helpless dependence upon Laura; while the letters of Abélard and Héloise enshrine them in everlasting remembrance.

In all literature there is no more touching death-bed scene than that of the patriarch Jacob. Dying, the Prince forgot his gold and silver, his herds and lands. Lifted up upon his pillows, in tremulous excitement he took upon his lips two names—God and Rachel. More than a score of years had passed since her death, but in that memorable hour the great man built a monument to her who had fed his joy and deepened his life.

Friendship carries a certain fertilizing force. All biographers tell us that each epoch in a hero's life was ushered in by a new friend. When Schiller met Göethe every latent talent awakened. The poet's friendship caused the youth to grow by leaps and bounds. Once, returning home after a brief visit to Göethe's house, one exclaimed: "I am amazed by the progress Schiller can make within a single fortnight!" Perhaps this explains why the great seem to come in groups. Thrust an Emerson into any Concord, and his pungent presence will penetrate the entire region. Soon all who come within the radius of his life respond to his presence, as flowers and trees respond with boughs brilliant and fragrant to the sunshine when spring replaces the icy winter. After a little time, each Emerson stands girt about with Hawthornes, Whittiers, Holmeses, and Lowells. The greatness of each Milton lingers in his friends, Cromwell and Hampden, as the sun lingers in the clouds after the day is done. Therefore the great epics and dramas, from the Iliad to the Idylls of the King, are stories of friendships. Take love out of our greatest literature, and it is like taking a sweet babe out of the clothes that cover it. Man listens eagerly to tales of eloquence and heroism, but loves most of all the stories of the heart. God is not more truly the life of dead matter than is love the very life of man.

Now, the secret of eminence in the realm of industry or art or invention is this: that the worker has wrought in his luminous mental moods. In its passive, inert states, the mind is receptive. Then reason is like a sheathed sword. Thought must be struck forth as fire is struck from flint. But under inspirational moods the mind begins to glow and kindle. Then the reason of the orator, the poet or reformer ceases to be like a taper, needing a match to light it, and becomes a sun, blazing with its own radiance. Spencer wrote: "By no political alchemy can we get golden conduct out of leaden instincts." Thus there is no necromancy by which the mind can get superior work out of its inferior moods.

When, then, reason approaches its task under the inspiration of enthusiasm and love, nature yields up all her secrets. Here is the author sitting down to write. Memory refuses facts, and reason declines to create fictions. The mind is dull and dead. Suddenly the step of some friend long absent is heard at the door. Then how do the faculties awake! Through all the long winter evening, the mind brings forth its treasures of wit, of anecdote, of instructive fact and charming allusion. Here is some Edison, with an enthusiasm for invention, who found his electric lamps that burned well for a month had suddenly gone out, and read in the morning paper the judgment of the scientist that his electric bulb was a good toy but a poor tool.

In his enthusiasm for his work, the man exclaimed, "I will make a statue of that professor, and illumine him with electric lamps, and make his ignorance memorable." Then Edison went away to begin a series of experiments that drove sleep from his eyes and slumber from his eyelids through five successive days and nights, until love and enthusiasm helped reason to wrest victory from defeat.

Here is the boy Mozart, with his love of music, toiling through the long days at tasks he hated, and in the darkening twilight stealing into the old church, where he poured out his very soul over the organ keys, sobbing out his mournful melodies. Here is Lincoln, with his enthusiasm for books, coming in at night all aching with cold and wet, and rising when parents slept, to roll another log upon the blazing hearth, while midst the grateful heat his eager eyes searched out the treasures that lay along the line of the printed page, until his mind grew rich and strong. And here are the Scottish clansmen and patriots, for love's sake, following the noble chieftain, their hearts all aflame, who, if they had a hundred lives, would gladly have given them all for their heroic leader. And here is the orator rising to plead the cause of the savage, and of the slave, before men who feel no sympathy, and are as castles locked and barred. But the love for the poor shines in Wendell Phillips' eyes, trembles in his voice, pleads in his thinking, until the multitude become all plastic to his thought, and his smile becomes their smile, his tear their tear, the throb of his heart the throb of the whole assembly. Here is the Scottish girl, in love with truth, standing midst the sea, within the clutches of the incoming tide. She is bound down midst the rising waters. Doomed is she and soon must die. But her eyes are turned upward toward the sky, and a great sweet light is on her face that tells us enthusiasm and love in her have been victorious over death. Truly, that Greek did well to call enthusiasm "a god within," for love is stronger than death.

The historian tells us that all the liberties, reforms and political achievements of society have been gained by nations thrilling and throbbing to one great enthusiasm. The Renaissance does not mean a single Dante, nor Boccaccio, but a national enthusiasm and a "god within all minds." The Reformation is not a single Savonarola, nor Luther, but a universal enthusiasm and "a god within," all heart and conscience. If we study these movements of society as typified by their leaders, these heroes stand forth before us with hearts all aflame and with minds that grow like suns. In times of great danger men develop unsuspected physical strength, and the force of the whole body seems to rush upward and compact itself with the thumb or fist. And in the mental world lawyers and orators tell us that at heated crises, when great issues hang upon their words, the memory achieves feats otherwise impossible. In these hours the mind becomes luminous. All the experience of the past passes before the orator with the majesty of a mighty wave or a rushing storm. Similarly, the hero inflamed with love or liberty becomes invincible. When some Garibaldi or Lincoln appears, and the people behold his greatness and beauty and magnanimity, every heart catches the sacred passion. Then the narrow-minded youth tumbles down his little idols, sets up diviner ideals, and finds new measurements for the thrones of heaven and earth. Then, in a great abandonment of love, the nation pours out its heart for the cause it loves.

Froude tells us that self-government has cost mankind hundreds of wars and thousands of battle-fields. Tennyson writes of the boy who was following his father's plow when the share turned up a human skull. There, where the plow stayed, the patriot had fallen in battle. Sitting upon the furrow with the child upon his knee, the father caused his boy to see a million men in arms fighting for some great principle; to see the battle-fields all red with blood; the hillsides all billowy with graves; caused him to hear the shrieking shot and shell; pointed out the army of cripples hobbling homeward. When the child shivered in fear the father whispered, "Your ancestors would have gladly died daily for the liberty they loved." And if to-day good men brood over the wrongs of Armenia, and breathe a silent prayer for those who struggle against desperate odds and "the unspeakable Turk," and if to-morrow and on the morrow's morrow editors and orators unite in words of sympathy and encouragement for the patriots fighting in some Cuba, it is because we believe the love of liberty implies the right to liberty; that despotism corrupts manhood; that self-government is the best for industry, the best for integrity, the best for intelligence. If the red plowshare of war must pass through the soil of the nations, may it bury forever the seeds of oppression and injustice, and sow for future generations the seeds of liberty, intelligence and religion!

Moreover, an overmastering passion is the secret of all eminence in scholarship. Each autumn the golden gates of learning swing wide to welcome the thousands who enter our colleges and universities. If it were possible for each young student to sit down and speak with the library and laboratory as with a familiar friend, we would hear wisdom's voice uttering one report: "I love them that love me." None of those forms of mental wealth called art or science or literature, enters the mind unasked or stays unurged. All the shelves are heavy with mental treasure, but only the eager mind may harvest it. Beauty sleeps in all the quarries, but only the eager chisel wakens it. Wealth is in every crack and crevice of the soil, but nature forbids the sluggard to mine it. Those forms of paradise called fame, position, influence, stand with gates open by day and night, but the cherubim with flaming swords wave back all idle youth. When the Grecian king set forth upon his expedition he stayed his golden chariot at the market-place. Lifting up his voice he forbade any man's body to enter his chariot whose heart remained behind. Thus the mind is a chariot that sweeps no unwilling student upward toward those heights where wisdom and happiness dwell.

To-day our young men and women stand in the midst of arts, vast, beautiful and useful; they are surrounded by all the facts of man's marvelous history; they breathe an atmosphere charged with refinement. But the youth who hates his books might as well be the poor savage lying on the banks of the Niger, whose soul sits in silence and starves to death in a silent dungeon. Should a kind heaven give us the power to select some charmed gift to be dropped down upon our youth, parents and teachers could ask nothing better than that each young heart should storm the gates of learning with such enthusiasm as belonged to Milton or Epictetus. The Roman slave had one leg broken and twisted by a cruel master, but in his enthusiasm for knowledge he used the dim light of his cell for copying the thoughts of great authors, and lay awake at night reflecting upon the problems of life and death with man's mysterious nature, and so made himself immortal by his devotion to the truth. For the student, enthusiasm is indeed "a god within." Ignorance is want of mental animation. The scientist tells us the Patagonians sleep eighteen hours each day, with a tendency to doze through the other six. Their minds are unable to make any kind of movement, and the chief once told Sir John Lubbock that he would love to talk were it not that large ideas made him very sleepy.

But it is all in vain that man has reason or learning or imagination if these talents lie sleeping. Not long ago the ruins of an old temple were discovered in Rome. When the spade had turned up the soil, lo, seeds long hidden awakened to cover the soil with rich verdure. For 2,000 years these germs had slept, waiting for the day of warmth and quickening. Thus each faculty of man is latent, until some powerful enthusiasm passes over it. Indeed, mental power is not in the multitude of knowledge acquired, but in the powerful enthusiasms that drive the informed soul along some noble path. Power is not in the engine, but in the steam that pounds the piston; and the soul is a mechanism driven forward by those motives called enthusiasm for learning or influence or wealth. Success might be defined as a full casting of the heart into some worthy cause.

It is high time that our young men should recognize that prosperity and wealth are won only when the mind moves enthusiastically along the pathway of industry. Our young men have been deeply injured by the fact that now and then some one stumbles upon sudden wealth, or by accident gains great treasure. But for every one such fortunate person, there are ten thousand who have failed of success for want of a purposeful enthusiasm.

The Persians have a strange story of the Golconda diamond mines. Once Ali Hafed sat with his wife looking out upon the river that flowed through their farm. Soon their children came through the trees bringing with them a traveler. In confidence the stranger showed Ali Hafed a diamond that shone like a drop of condensed sunshine. He told his host that one large diamond was worth whole mines of copper and silver; that a handful would make him a prince; that a mine of diamonds would buy a kingdom. That night wealthy Ali Hafed went to bed a poor man, for poverty is discontent. When the morning came he sold his farm for gold, and went forth in search of diamonds. Years passed. Old and gray he returned in rags and poverty. He found his dear ones had all died in penury. He also found that the peasant who bought his farm was now a prince. One day, digging in the white sand in the stream at the foot of the garden, the peasant saw a shining something that sent his heart to his mouth. Running his hands through the sand, he found it sown with gems. Thus were discovered the Golconda mines. Had Ali Hafed dug in his own garden, instead of starvation, poverty and a broken heart, he would have owned gems that made nations rich.

This legend reminds us how youth constantly throws away its opportunities. Each day some man exchanges a farm in Pennsylvania for the prairies of Dakota, only to find that the hills he despised have developed oil that makes his successor rich. Each year purposeful men grow rich out of trifles that the careless cast away. The sewers of Paris have made one man wealthy with treasure beyond that of gold mines. The wastes of a cotton mill founded the fortune of one of the greatest families in England. Peter Cooper used to say that he built the Cooper Institute by picking up the refuse that the butcher shops threw aside. A boy tugging over a shoe-last in Haverhill, Mass., was told by his mother to give himself to making better and stronger lasts. Twenty years of enthusiastic study ended, and he was president of one of the greatest of our railways. In 1870, a youth sat upon the slag heap of a mine in California. But he gave his full mind to each clod, and going away for a few weeks he returned with a machine that extracted greater treasure from the slag than men had ever gained from the mines. All wise men unite in telling us that ours is a world where prosperity is won by fidelity to details, and that wealth comes through little improvements. But, best of all, a purposeful enthusiasm gives mental wealth, and achieves a treasure beyond gold and rubies—a worthy character.

Nor is there any dross that love will not refine away, nor any vice that love can not expel from the heart. Wordsworth was so impressed with the evil of avarice that he could compare it only to a poisoned vine that wrapped itself so tightly about his favorite tree that vine and tree became one life, and the removal of the one meant the death of the other. But in her most famous story George Eliot tells us that avarice passes utterly away before the touch of love. Silas Marner was the victim of blackest ingratitude. His friend was a thief, who thrust upon him the blame of a black crime. Suddenly, this innocent man found all homes closed to his hand, all shops locked to his tools, while even the market refused his wares. Through two years and more, right bravely he held his head aloft and looked all men in the face. At length hunger and want drove him forth a wanderer. Then he shook off the dust of his feet against his false friends, and cursed their firesides. Kindness in him soured into cynicism, his sweetness became bitterness, his faith in God and man fluttered feebly for awhile, then lay without a single pulse-beat. In anger he cursed God, but could not die.

Journeying afar, the traveler at length stayed his steps in a distant village. Then in toil he sought to forget. Rising a great while before day, he wrought with the activity of a spinning insect; and while men slept, his loom hummed far into the night. When fifteen years had passed, he had much gold and was a miser. Under the brick floor he secreted his treasure. Each night he locked the door, shuttered his windows, and poured upon the table his gold and silver. He bathed his hands in the yellow river. He piled his guineas up in heaps. Sometimes he slept with arms around his precious money-bags. One evening he lifted the bricks of the floor, to find that the hole was empty. Benumbed with terror, he went everywhither seeking his treasure. He kneaded his bed, swept his oven, peered into each crack and crevice. When the full truth fell upon the miser, he sent forth a wild, ringing scream—the soul's cry of desolation. Then in his grief he rushed into the rain and the wild night, and wandered on and on, stupefied with pain. Not until morning came did he stagger in out of the storm. Entering, he saw the glint of yellow by his hearth. With a wild cry he sprang forward and clutched it. But it was not gold; it was something better—it was the yellow locks of a sleeping child. Broken-hearted, with nothing else to live for, Silas Marner took the deserted babe into his bosom. As the weeks went on, the little creature nestled into his heart. For the child's sake he turned again to his loom; love taught him thrift and industry. For the child's sake he bought books and hived knowledge; love made a scholar of him. For the child's sake he planted vines, roses and all sweet flowers; love made him an artist. For the child's sake he bought carpets for the bare floors and pictures for the wall; love had made him generous. For the child's sake he knelt one night and recited her prayer; love would fain make him a Christian. But he hated men, and could not forget their ingratitude. One day a rich man's carriage stopped before his cottage. The lord of the mansion told a strange story—how this beautiful girl of eighteen was his daughter. In that hour the girl, tall and beautiful, turned away from palace, lands, position, and, for the love she bore him, put her arms around Silas Marner and refused to leave him. Then something in him gave way, and Silas Marner wept. Then confidence in man and God was his again. Love had destroyed avarice and purged away his sin. For love is a civilizer; it makes saints out of savages. As an armor of ice melts before the sun, so all vice and iniquity disappear in the presence of an overmastering affection.

It remains for us to consider that the absence of an enthusiastic devotion to integrity and the law of God explains the moral disasters and shipwrecks that have increased the tears and sorrows of mankind. Recently the people of this land opened their morning papers only to be deeply shocked by a rehearsal of grievous disasters, not all of which were physical. It seems that an awful cyclone had swept through a Western community, twisting the orchards, destroying houses and barns, and leaving behind a swath wide and black with destruction. In addition, the foreign news told of a volcano whose crater had suddenly poured forth a river of lurid lava, which, sweeping down the mountain side, consumed the homes of the flying multitude. But the saddest disaster was reserved to the last. It told of the shame and sorrow, from which there is no recovery, that had befallen the parents and friends of three young men, hitherto held in high honor. It seems that for many years these men had been honored by their friends, and trusted by the banks in which they were employed. But in a dark hour they determined to cease to be gentlemen, preferring, rather, to join the ranks of thieves. Despising every principle of honor, the gold which employers committed to their care was taken, not to the safety vault, but distributed among gamblers and evil persons. And our heavy sorrow is increased when we read in our commercial reports that last year 625 men went astray as embezzlers, robbing the people in forty-five states of $25,234,112. The time seems to have come for this nation to sit down in sackcloth and ashes.

To all good men comes the reflection that either this immorality must cease its ravages, or this nation will be irretrievably disgraced. Were it possible to search out these unhappy men, some of them wearing the convict's garb, and some wandering as fugitives in foreign lands, henceforth to be men "without a country," and question each for the cause of his deep disgrace, from all would come this shameful confession: "I loved evil and hated the law of God." Not one could confess to passionate, enthusiastic devotion to the divine laws. But every tree not rooted goes down before the storm, and every ship unanchored midst the rocks will go to pieces when the wind rises. Would that we could to-day cause the laws of God to stand forth as sharply defined as mountain peaks before the eyes of all young men; would that we could also kindle in each a passionate love and loyal affection for these holy laws. If the youth of to-day are to be the leaders of to-morrow, and are ever to have power to stir their fellows, to correct abuses, revolutionize society, or organize history, they must, with the enthusiasm of love, ally themselves with God and His law, clothing that law with flesh until it becomes visible, clothing it with voice until it becomes eloquent, thrilling it with power until it becomes triumphant. Only love fulfills law!

Most of all does man need the enthusiasm of love toward his God and Saviour. In the olden time Plato expressed a wish to have the moral law become a living personage, that beholding, mankind might stand amazed and entranced at her beauty. The philosopher felt that abstractions were too cold to kindle the soul's enthusiasm. As planets are removed from the sun, their light and heat lessen; their flowers fade; their fruits lack luster; their summers shorten. Thus Neptune stands in the midst of perpetual ice and winter, without tree or bird or human voice. But as our earth approaches the direct rays of the sun, its beauty increases, its harvests grow heavy.

As if to fulfill Plato's desire, Jesus Christ drew near to our world, not to chill man's heart, but to strengthen his affection, refine his reason, enlarge his horizon. How admirable Christ's words, how illustrious His work, how divine His character! The philosopher describes man, but Jesus Christ loves man, weeps for man, dies for man. Dante inspires, but Jesus Christ gives life. Shakespeare shines, but Jesus Christ uplifts. History causes the heroes of yesterday to pass before the mind, surrounded by applauding multitudes. When Napoleon entered Paris the people ran together with one accord, and the tides of enthusiasm rose like a mountain freshet. When Garibaldi entered Florence, when Kossuth passed up Broadway in New York, when Grant, returning homeward, entered our own city, the streets were filled solidly with multitudes who forgot hunger and exhaustion, exalted by hero-worship.

But the divine man never stood forth in full proportion until Jesus Christ stepped upon this planet. What strength! What gentleness! Behold His exquisite sympathy! Behold the instinct of confidence, that drew little children to His arms! How did men, defiled within and without, throng round Him, while His presence wrought the miracle of miracles in cleansing them! Then for the first time in history did disheveled ones so feel the beauty of goodness that an irresistible enthusiasm drew them about Him to kiss the very hem of His garment. All the excellencies of life, and more, unite in Him; the orator's persuasive speech; the artist's love of beauty; the scholar's passion for truth; the patriot's love of country. His also is more than the love of mother, lover, friend, for his is the love of Saviour. To-day He rises over each soul in such majesty of excellence as to include the excellencies of everything in heaven and everything on earth. As the clouds sometimes, after hanging for days and nights in the atmosphere, at length come together and pour down their refreshing showers, so let all that is deepest and richest and sweetest in man's thought and affection pour itself out before Him who is worthy of the world's anthem. For His mind will guide, His mercy forgive, His love redeem, His hand lead—not into the abyss of death, but unto the heavenly heights. He who with Dante looks upward to-day may behold the Saviour's divine chariot "sweeping along the confines of heaven, a sweet light above it, its wheels almost blocked with flowers."

Conscience and Character

IX

Conscience and CharacterToC

Von Humboldt said that every man, however good, has a yet better man within him. When the outer man is unfaithful to his deeper convictions, the hidden man whispers a protest. The name of this whisper in the soul is conscience. And never had monarch aspect so magisterial as when conscience terrified King Herod into confession. The cruel, crafty despot had slain John the Baptist to gratify the revenge of the beautiful Jezebel, his wife, reproved of John for her outrageous sins. But soon passed from memory that hateful night when the blood of a good man mingled with the red wine of the feast. Luxury by day and revelry by night caused the hateful incident to be forgotten. Soon a full year had passed over the palace with its silken seclusion. One day, when the dead prophet had long been forgotten, a courtier at the king's table told the story of a strange carpenter, whose name and fame were ringing through the land.

Who is He? asked the feasters, pausing over their spiced wine. Who is He? asked the women, gossiping over the new sensation. Suddenly, conscience touched an old memory in Herod's heart. In terror the despot rose from the banquet. As in the legend, when the murderer's finger touched the gaping wound the blood began again to flow—a silent witness against the unsuspected but guilty friend, so Herod's conscience opened up again his guilty secret. Memory, thrusting a hooked pole into "the ocean of oblivion, brought up the pale and drowned deed." The long-forgotten sin was revealed in all its ghastly atrocity. It availed nothing that Herod was a Sadducee—the agnostic of antiquity. For, when conscience spake, all his doubts fell away. Immortality and responsibility were clear as noonday. Holding a thousand swords in her hand, conscience attacked the guilty king. Then were fulfilled Plato's words: "If we could examine the heart of a king, we would find it full of scars and black wounds." For no slave was ever marked by his master's scourge as Herod's heart was lashed by his conscience.

Socrates told his disciples that the facts of conscience must be reckoned with as certainly as the facts of fire or wood or water. None may deny the condemnation that weighed upon the soul of Herod or Judas, or the approval of conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from Æschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated that, thirty years before, in a distant province, he had taken the life and property of his master, and thereby gained his present position and influence. Though he had never been suspected of crime, he now begged his fellow Judges to condemn him to the death unto which his conscience had long urged him. Here is the student of man and things, Dr. Samuel Johnson: In his old and honored age he goes back to Litchfield to stand with uncovered head from morning till night in the market-place on the spot where fifteen years before he had refused to keep his father's book-stall. Despite the grotesque figure he made, midst the sneers and the rain, conscience bade him expiate his breach of filial piety. And here is Channing, the scholar and seer: A child of six years, he lifted his stick to strike the tortoise, as he had seen older boys do. But in that moment an inner voice whispered loud and clear: "It is wrong." In his fright the boy hastened home to fling himself into his mother's arms. "What was the voice?" he asked. To which his mother answered: "Men call the voice conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of God. And always your happiness will depend upon obedience to that little voice."

Here also is the great Persian Sadi. One day he found a good man in the jungle, who had been attacked by a tiger and horribly mutilated. Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and serene. "Great God," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.

Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest thought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity. If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty—to pain us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending it authority.

We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they have portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life. That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in his "Les Misérables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped convict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and began life again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of the town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his protests he was tried as Jean Valjean, and was about to be remanded to prison—this time for life. Unless some one cleared him he must go to the galleys. Only Jean Valjean himself can clear the stranger. How clear him? By confessing his identity and going himself.

In that hour the mayor's brain reeled. He retired to his inner room. Then the tempest raged in his brain as a cyclone rages through the trees, twisting off the branches and pulling up the roots. Must he go back again to the galleys with their profanity and obscenity? Must he resign his mayoralty and his wealth? Must he give up his life, so useful and helpful, and all to save a possible year or two of life for this old man? Were not these two young wards whom he was supporting more than this one old wreck? Fate had decided. Let the old man go to the galleys.

Then with muscles tense as steel, with jugular vein all swollen and purple, Jean Valjean took the two candlesticks given him by the Bishop, his thorn cane, the coin taken from the boy, and cast all upon the blazing coals. Soon the flames had licked all up. Then Victor Hugo says: "Jean Valjean heard a burst of internal laughter." What was it in him jeering and mocking? At midnight from sheer exhaustion the mayor slept. Dreaming, he seemed to be in a hall of justice where an old man was being tried. There were roses in the vase, only sin had bleached the crimson petals gray. The sunlight came through the window, only sin had washed the color from the sunbeam and left the golden rays ashen pale. All the people were silent. At length an officer touched the mayor and said: "Do you know you have been dead a long while? Your body lives, but you died when you slew your conscience." Suddenly a voice said: "Jean Valjean, you may melt the candlestick, burn your clothes, change your face, but God sees you." Afterward came a second burst of internal laughter. Then the mayor arose swiftly, took his horse, drove hard all night and reached the distant village to enter the courtroom just as the old man was about to be sent to the galleys. Ascending the prisoner's dock, he confessed his identity. Victor Hugo tells us that in that hour the judge and the lawyer saw a strange light upon the mayor's face, and felt a light within dazzling their hearts. It was the same light that fell on the German monk's face when before the Emperor at Worms he said: "I cannot and will not recant!" and then boldly fronted death. Conscience shining through made Luther's face luminous, as it had made the face of Moses before him!

As obedience to the behests of conscience has always yielded happiness and formed character, so disobedience has always destroyed manhood. The great novelists have exhibited the deterioration of character in their hero as beginning with a sin against the sense of duty. In Romola, George Eliot exhibits Tito as a gifted and ideal youth. The orphan child was adopted by the Greek scholar, who lavished upon him all the gifts of affection, all the culture and embellishments of the schools, all the comforts of a beautiful home; and when the longing for foreign travel came upon the youth the foster-father could not deny him, but took passage for Tito and himself and sailed for Alexandria. But the motto of Tito's life was, get all the pleasure you can, avoid all the pain. Soon the old scholar became a clog and a burden. One night, conscience battled for its life with Tito. At midnight the youth arose, unbuckled from his father's waist the leather belt stuffed with jewels, and fled into the night, leaving the gray-haired man among strangers whose language he could not speak.

Then this youth sailed away to Florence. There his handsome person, his Southern beauty, his grace of address, his aptitude for affairs, won him the admiration of the wisest statesmen and the heart of one of the noblest of women. But all the time we feel toward this beautiful youth that same loathing and contempt that we feel toward a beautiful young tiger. Tito had no conscience toward Romola, no conscience toward her father's priceless library, no conscience toward the patriots struggling for the city's liberty; he played the traitor toward all. His soul was, indeed, sheathed in a glowing and beautiful body; but it was the corpse sheathed over with flowers and vines; and so conscience becomes an avenger upon Tito. When the keystone goes from the arch, all must crash down in ruins. Unconsciously but surely the youth moved toward his destruction. The day of doom was delayed, but there came an hour when conscience first drove Tito into the Arno's swift current, and then became a millstone, that sunk him into the deep abyss. For ours is a world in which nature and God cannot afford to permit sin to prosper. Conscience is God's avenger.

Open all the master books, and they portray the same truth. Three of the seven greatest novels deal with conscience. Seven of the world's greatest dramas are studies of conscience and of duty. The masterpieces of Sophocles and Æschylus, of Dante and Milton, of Göethe and Byron, are all studies of the soul's oracle, that, disobeyed, hurls man into the abyss, or, followed, becomes wings, lifting him into the open sky.

Demosthenes said that knowledge begins with definition. What, then, is conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose it to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and there is a popular notion that conscience is a distinct faculty, testing deeds for morality. Many suppose that, when God made man, He implanted conscience as an automatic moral mechanism, a kind of inner mind, to act in his absence; but conscience is not a single faculty. It includes many faculties, and is complex in nature. It has an intellectual element, and this is distinctly fallible and capable of education. Witness the Indians, believing it to be right to kill aged persons. Witness savages of old, sacrificing their children to appease the gods. Just as there has been an evolution in tools, in laws and in institutions, so has there been an evolution of the intellectual element in conscience. Thucydides tells us that the time was in Sparta when stealing was right. In that far-off time a boy was praised for exhibiting skill and dexterity in pilfering. Stealing was disgraceful and wrong only when it was found out, and, if the theft was large and skillfully done, it won honor—a condition of things that still prevails in some sections.

Never since man stepped foot upon this planet has there been a time when conscience, the judge, has praised a David when sinning against what he believed to be the law of right; never once has it condemned a Daniel in doing what he believed to be right. In this sense conscience is, indeed, infallible and is the very voice and regent of God.

Since, therefore, conscience partakes of this divine nature and speaks as an oracle, what are its uses and functions? Primarily, the moral sense furnishes a standard and tests actions for righteousness or iniquity. To its judgment-seat comes reason, with its purposes and ambitions. When his color sense is jaded the artist uses the sapphire or ruby to bring his tints up to perfection. And when contact with selfishness or sordidness has soiled the soul's garments, dulled its instruments, and lowered its standards, then conscience comes in to freshen the ideals and to smite vice and vulgarity. In these luminous hours when conscience causes the deeper convictions to prevail, how beautiful seem truth and purity and justice! How does the soul revolt from iniquity, even as the eye revolts from the slough or the nostril from filth!

Conscience has also relations to judgment. It pronounces upon the inner motive that colors the deeds, for it is the motive within that makes the actions without right or wrong. When Coleridge, the schoolboy, was going along the street thinking of the story of Hero and Leander and imagining himself to be swimming the Hellespont, he threw wide his arms as though breasting the waves. Unfortunately, his hand struck the pocket of a passer-by and knocked out a purse. The outer deed was that of a pickpocket and could have sent the youth to jail. The inner motive was that of an imaginative youth deeply impressed by the story he was translating from the Greek, and that inner motive made the owner of the purse his friend and sent young Coleridge to college. Thus, the philosopher tells us, the motive made what was outwardly wrong to be inwardly right.

Memory, too, is influenced by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up all our yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penman writing with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression and recording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire. Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. Sir William Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at four years of age. When a few brief summers and winters had passed over his head, the language of far-off Russia had passed completely out of the child's mind. Seventy years afterward, stricken with his last illness, in his delirium the man spoke with perfect ease in the language of childhood. In moments of extreme excitement, when ships go down or death is imminent, conscience doth so quicken the mind that all the deeds and thoughts of an entire career are reviewed within a few minutes. Scholars have been deeply impressed with this unique fact. Seeking to interpret it, Walter Scott takes us into the castle where a foul murder was committed. So deeply did the red current stain the floor that, though the servants scrubbed and scrubbed and planed and planed, still the dull red stains oozed up through the oaken planks. This is the great Scotchman's way of saying that our deeds stain through the very fiber and substance of the soul.

Looking backward, we see only here and there a peak of remembrance standing out midst the sea of forgetfulness, even as the islands in the West Indies stand out midst the ocean. But each of these island peaks represents a submerged continent. Drain off the sea, and the mountains ease off toward the foothills and the hills toward the great plains that make up the hidden land. Thus the isolated memories of the past are all united, and will at length stand forth in perfect revelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes, even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the pen in the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, though juries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers and never sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul's king be deposed from its throne, to-morrow it will ascend to the judgment-seat and lift the scepter. For conscience represents God and acts in His stead.

Consider the workings of conscience in daily life. The ideal man is he who is equally conscientious toward intellect and affection, toward plan and purpose. But in practical life men are Christian only in spots and departments. The soul may be likened unto a house, and conscience is the furnace thereof. Sometimes the householder turns the heat into the sitting-room and parlor, but in the other rooms he turns off the warm currents of air. Sometimes heat is turned into the upper rooms, while the lower rooms are cold. Thus conscience, that should govern all faculties alike, is largely departmental in its workings. Some men are conscientious toward Sunday, but not toward the week days. On Sunday they sing like saints, on Monday they act like demons. On the morning of St. Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX was conscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during three hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his fellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb.

In the Middle Ages conscience worked toward outer forms. In those days the baron and priest made a contract. The general led his peasants forth to burn and pillage and kill, and the priest absolved the murderers for five per cent of the profits. Men were very conscientious toward absolution, but not at all toward the neighbor's flocks and barns. In others conscience is largely superstition. Recently an officer of our army found himself sitting beside his host at a table containing thirteen guests. The soldier, who perhaps would have braved death on the battle-field, was pricked by his conscience for sitting at table where the guests numbered thirteen. But he was afraid to die at the dinner-table. He believed that the great God who makes suns and stars and blazing planets to fly from His hand as sparks beneath the hammer of a smith, the god of Sirius and Orion, always stopped his work at six o'clock to count the guests around each table, and if he found perchance there were thirteen, then would lift his arrow to the bow to let fly the deadly shaft upon these awful sinners against the law of twelve chairs or fourteen.

Singularly enough, now and then an individual is conscientious toward some charm, as in the case of a merchant who presently discovered that he had left his buckeye at home. He had carried this for twenty years. Had he forgotten to pray he would not have gone home to fall upon his knees. Nature and God were in the merchant's counting-room, but not the buckeye. So he hurriedly left his office to bring back the agent that secured all his success and prosperity.

Then, there is a commercial conscience. Some men feel that the law of right is chiefly binding upon a man in his business relations. They exile themselves from home, break the laws of love and companionship with the wife whom they have engaged to cherish and love, until they become strangers to her. But conscience does not prick them. Home, friends, music, culture, all these may be neglected—but the business, never. Others there are whose consciences work largely toward the home. When they cross their own thresholds they are genial, kind and delightful. As hosts they are famed for their companionship. Dying, their fame is gathered up by the expressions, "good husband, good father, good provider." But they have no conscience toward the street. They count other men their prey, being grasping, greedy and avaricious. They feel about their fellows just as men do about the timber in the forest. When a man wants timber for his house, he says, "That is the tree I want," and the woodsman fells it and squares it for the sill. Does he want stone for his foundations or marble for his finishings? There are the rocks; quarry them. Men go into inanimate nature and get the materials they need. Nor is it very different in the great world of business and ambition. The giant takes one man for the foundation and cuts him down and builds him into the walls; he selects another man and uses him up, building his substance into the structure; he looks upon his fellows as the shepherd upon his flocks—so much wool to be sheared.

Nor is the work of conscience very different in the moral and spiritual realm. Here is one man who is conscientious toward yesterday. Ten years ago, he says, "while kneeling in the field light broke through the clouds" and he obtained "a hope." And every Sunday since that day he has not failed to recall that scene. He is not conscientious about having a new, fresh, crisp, vital experience for to-day, but he is conscientiously faithful in recalling that old experience. It is all as foolish as if he should say that ten years ago he had a bath, or ten years ago he drank at the bubbling spring, or ten years ago he met a friend. What about to-day's purity, to-day's loaf and to-day's friendships? The heart should count no manna good that is not gathered fresh each morning. Others there are whose conscience works largely toward doctrine and intellectual statements. With them Christianity is a function of thought in the brain. These are they who want every sermon to consist of linked arguments. The good deacon sits in his pew and listens to the unfolding of proofs of election or foreordination. When the arguments have been piled up to sixteen or eighteen, the good man begins to chuckle with delight, saying, "Verily, this is a high day in Israel; my soul feasts on fat things." Other men want some flesh on their skeletons, but he is fed on the dry bones of logic.

Sometimes conscience affects only the feelings. Fifty years ago there was a type numbering hundreds of thousands of persons whose religion was largely emotional. In great camp-meetings filled with a warm atmosphere men showed at their best. The sunny spot of all the year was the month of revival meetings. Then they experienced the luxury of spiritual enjoyment. They lived on the top of some Mount of Transfiguration, while the world below was thundering with wickedness and tormented with passion. Men became drunk with emotions. Religion was an exquisite form of spiritual selfishness. Afterward came an era when men learned to transmute feelings into thoughts and fidelities toward friendships and business and duty. At other times conscience has had unique manifestations in fidelity toward creeds. Now one denomination and now another, forgetting to be conscientious in meeting together for days and weeks to plan in the interests of the pauper, the orphans, the tenement house or the foreign district in the great city, will through months of excitement exhibit conscience toward some doctrinal symbol. Witness the recent upheaval about inspiration. As water bubbling up through the spring was once rain that fell from the sky, so the truth coming through the lips of poet or prophet was first breathed into the heart by God. Recently a good professor thought more emphasis should be laid upon the human spring. But his opponents thought the emphasis should be placed upon the sky, from which the rain fell. In the broil about the nature of the water, the spring itself was soiled, much mud stirred up, until multitudes wholly forgot the spring, and many knew not whether there was any water of life.

But conscience in some, means fidelity to what man and God did—not what God is doing or will do. When the flowing sap under the stimulus of the sun causes the tree to grow and splits the bark, men rejoice that the bark is rent and that new and larger growths must be inserted. Sometimes a child, long feeble and sickly, enters upon a period of very rapid growth. Soon the boy's old clothes are too small, and so is his hat. But what if the parents should remember only that the clothes and hat came from some famous pattern? What if in their zeal to preserve the hat they should put an iron band about the boy's forehead and never permit it to increase so that the hat would not fit? What if they should put a strait-jacket about the chest to restrain the stature? This would show great zeal toward the hat and the coat, but meanwhile what is to become of the boy? Strange that men should be so conscientious toward an intellectual symbol, but forget to give liberty to other men's consciences who day and night seek to please God and be true to their beliefs. Thus in a thousand ways conscience is partial and fragmentary in its workings. Only one full-orbed man has ever trod our earth!

God's crowning gift to man is the gift of conscience. Reason is a noble and kingly faculty, turning reveries into orations and conversations into books. Imagination is a stately and divine gift, turning thoughts into poems and blocks of stone into statues. Great is the power of an eloquent tongue instructing men, restraining, inspiring, stimulating vast multitudes. Great are the joys of memory, that gallery stored with pictures of the past. But there is no genius of mind or heart comparable to a vigorous conscience, magisterial, clear-eyed, wide-looking. He who gave all-comprehending reason, all-judging reason, reserved his best gift to the last—then gave the gift of conscience.

Man is a pilgrim and conscience is the guide, leading him safely through forests and thickets, restraining from the paths of wrong, pointing out the ways of right. Man is a voyager and conscience is his compass. The sails may be swept away, and the engines stopped, but the voyager yet may be saved if only the compass is kept. In time of danger man may be careless about his garments, but not about his hand or foot or eye. It is possible to sustain the loss of wealth, friends and outer honors, but no man can sustain the loss of conscience. It is the soul's eye. Afar off it sees the face of God. Instructed, guided, loved, and redeemed by Jesus Christ, he who while living is at peace with his Master and with his conscience will, when dying, find himself at peace with his God.