The Hearth Stone Part 10

Men and their arts, indeed, appear in utmost number and force in cities; but without the constant reinforcements from the country, the tribute of fresh energy and enterprise, the products of mechanical ingenuity, and of agricultural labor, the metropolis would soon languish, deprived at once of its daily bread, and its best intellectual resources. Even the beautiful arts, which adorn the homes and halls of cities, appeal to an eye and taste that ought to be well schooled in the observation of nature, and the canvas can never reveal its best meaning to minds conversant only with crowded streets and busy marts. If we must go to the city to see the gathered treasures of rural labor and skill, we must go to the country to learn to comprehend the affluence of the city, to understand the secret of its wealth, and to interpret the wonders of its useful and beautiful arts.

Surely, then, we cannot but recognize the worth of the country in respect to the objects which it presents. Its beauty, although in some measure expressive of the work of man's hand, is most eloquent with the glory of G.o.d. Its plainest utilities bloom into loveliness, and to a devout ear sing out in anthems. Its wealth speaks less of man's arrogance than of heaven's bounty. We might inst.i.tute in this respect a comparison between the pursuits of men in town and country. They are in both situations toiling for gain, and in both cases more or less in compet.i.tion with men, and in contact with natural laws. But in the country, men depend less upon shrewd bargaining, and far more upon the direct return of their labor in the products of the soil. They deal more directly with their Creator, and there is more constancy and security, if not so much excitement of hope and fear in their gains. Refres.h.i.+ng and instructive it is for those whose business habits lead them to look upon the chances of traffic as the source of wealth, to learn for themselves how much stronger security the Creator has given for the sustenance of man; and important as are finance and traffic, the best treasures of man come from the soil in return for his skill and industry. Surely the pursuits most habitual in rural life teach many a sober lesson to men fevered with the compet.i.tions of traffic.

We might show also that the country may afford quite as valuable hints in the simplicity of its pleasures, as in the sobriety of its industry. They who are in the habit of regarding enjoyment as the result of some costly dissipation, need to learn of nature a stern, yet blessed lesson, and find that true happiness is not a far-fetched luxury, but is very near us, when we live near to G.o.d, and true to his laws. Wretched are they who make of their seasons of recreation but a new round of dissipation, and repeat the orgies of the winter in the retreats of the summer!

It is often asked whether life in the town or the country is, on the whole, most favorable to the formation of character,--the pursuit of true wisdom, virtue, happiness. Without being obliged to take either side of the question, it is sufficient at present to urge the importance of guarding against the peculiar exposures of each condition; and especially, of urging people of the town to look well to the sins that beset them, and seek in the broad fields truths that they need in their own homes.

They live in the midst of excitement and need sobriety. If they have more intensity, they have also more fever of mind, and may take counsel wisely of those whose temper is more serene, if, perhaps, sometimes more sluggish, and whose habits are likely to be more equable, if in danger of becoming sometimes monotonous. We absolutely need the influence of rural life to soothe our spirits and calm our nerves. The pulse itself abates its fevered beat, and the heart is quieted down into harmony with the gentler pulse of nature. If the town offers stimulus to the visitor from the country, the country repays the gift by giving calmness, and thus the power of new energy to the visitor from the city.

A serene frame of body and mind is certainly one requisite of wisdom, and not the only requisite which rural life favors. We need to look beyond the horizon of fas.h.i.+on and conventionality, which we are so apt to mistake for the entire world, and correct our observations by careful notes of those forms of rural life, which, after all our city pride, we must regard as most expressive of the common lot of man in all nations and ages. The man who sums up all his views of rural manners in the contemptuous word _countrified_, will do well to remember that there is not a little reason to form a more contemptuous word in reference to such persons as himself, and call the fop, who mistakes his circle of loiterers for the human race, and his haunts of folly for the world of wisdom, as sillier than the simplest rustic, farther from the true mark in being _citified_ than the latter in being _countrified_. They that dwell in crowds very easily become very knowing, but not necessarily wise. They that frequent the haunts of vice and frivolity learn many things that do but add to their folly. They do not view life in its best aspects and true aims, nor interpret it as its Divine Author teaches. Even those whose minds are open to the true science of humanity, need to flee from the crowd to ponder soberly upon its lessons. In the busy world, they are constantly finding seeds of thought, but in a far less troubled soil these seeds must be nurtured and matured. Probably the wisest meditations upon man, society, Providence, have been engaged in by persons well taught indeed in the ways of the great world, but ruminating in quiet upon its teachings, and correcting the prejudices of the hour by the sober reasonings of calmer scenes and influences. To such truthful judgment of distant things surveyed from its serener retreats, rural life adds a wisdom peculiarly its own,--a wisdom such as Solomon so sagaciously incorporated in his proverbs, and Jesus so divinely presented in his parables.

It would not be difficult to show the happy influence of familiarity with the country in teaching lessons of virtue--in bracing the frame for hardier labors--in urging the worth of the lesser ethics of frugality and economy, and the higher morals of true manliness and G.o.dliness. Virtue is moral strength, and is taught in every school that strengthens the moral energies. The genial air and simple habits of rural life favor manly fort.i.tude, and a manly spirit. Poor would be the future prospects of our nation if they rested wholly with the dwarfed and fevered offspring of our cities. Our people would ere long lose their place among the nations, and would drop their heads in shame in comparison with men trained in hardy sports and healthful labors, as the yeomanry and gentry of England.

Religion itself, which is the crown of true manliness, would languish if there were no more check to vice and skepticism than the check, strong indeed as it is, which metropolitan churches afford. How wonderfully the power of faith among the peasants of La Vendee withstood the sneers and threats of Paris, with its armed bands of Atheists in the great convulsion, when priests became scoffers and churches were places of rioting! How n.o.bly our own churches have been favored by the words and thoughts of elect minds devoted to G.o.d and his truth, in peaceful villages away from the crowded marts! Where would the pulpit find the teachers that are needed, if its sole dependence were upon the youth reared in cities? I could not but think much of the power of rural life in raising up vigorous and independent preachers, whilst I was enjoying a few weeks of recreation in the lovely town in which President Dwight prepared himself for his more conspicuous ministry at New Haven. I have rambled with delight again and again over that n.o.ble Greenfield Hill, which he celebrated in a poem, and have not wondered that the vast and charming prospect, ranging as it does from the broad waters of Long Island Sound to the peak of the Catskill Mountains, should have made something of a poet of a theologian, sometimes so remorseless a logician. May we not see, however, in his theological works, and still more in the pages of his mighty predecessor in theology, Edwards, of Northampton, who, too, dwelt among scenes of singular beauty, ample proofs that nature never deserts her votaries, nor fails to breathe into them a spirit of beauty, that can live, after the harsh dogmas have perished like the husks that inclose the grain for the harvest.

I would not disparage our town life, nor call it by any means G.o.dless. It is happy in being able to command so many resources, happy in being able to ally to itself so many influences not its own. Where there are souls there G.o.d may be known, and where learning and experience gather their treasure; we may find light upon the ways of G.o.d and his Providence. But very poorly do we study this manifold creation, and the word of its Creator, if we limit our horizon to the streets and walls, and business and pleasure even of the greatest metropolis. The Bible itself--that book so full of the poetry of nature--from its first to its last chapter, from the Old Eden to the New Jerusalem exhaling the fragrance of fields and breathing the genial air of rivers and mountains,--lifting the soul to G.o.d by the contemplation of his works,--the Bible is a sealed book to us, if we do not always read its parallel revelation in the heavens and upon the earth. There is an expression in nature which must be caught, like that on a friend's countenance, from itself. Description is not enough, and the best scientific a.n.a.lysis, however valuable as an aid, is but a poor subst.i.tute for the original reality. G.o.d speaks to us still in his works, and what prophets and bards of old have heard, we may now hear. We may hear it perhaps all the more eagerly for the comparative rarity of the privilege. They that are trained in cities wisely yearn to breathe the country air, and in its diviner meaning, interpret the landscape. Pastoral poets and rural philosophers find their fondest admirers in such minds.

Who has exercised this blessed ministry of the interpretation of nature better than Wordsworth, poet and philosopher at once as he is? With all their exquisite refinement, and their sometimes mystical sentiment, his poems are tinted with the hues of sky and mountain, lake and meadow, eloquent with the voices of the seasons, breathing the calm spirit of nature in its pleadings with the rebel temper of man. In how many of us they awaken blessed remembrances of our childhood, refresh us in our worn, anxious, and weary life as with the gush of living waters, and the sight of gra.s.sy meadows! Kind Heaven would not have us lose the companions.h.i.+p of nature, and has given us elect minds as well as glorious scenery to be its interpretation. There is peace as well as power in listening to such ministries. Nor do I fear to place upon this list, those men who have brought a fine taste and genial humility to the culture and adornment of the soil, the improvement of rural architecture and landscape gardening!

What name deserves more grateful mention than that of Downing, that lover of nature and of the art that best interprets her ideal. I know of no village which does not bear directly or indirectly some mark of his mind, in the form of a cottage or school-house, or a garden devised after his idea. He has brought out the wealth of our forests, and in our summer retreat, many a tree that else had been cramped and hidden in the swamp has whispered his requiem to our ears.

The course of thought which I have pursued regarding the objects and influences of country life, will find an answer in many of my city readers. We need no tent of green branches to quicken our remembrance of Heaven's bounty to us and our fathers in our relations to rural scenes.

Our memory has a leafy arbor of unfading foliage, in which we may every day celebrate G.o.d's goodness to us in the gift of so n.o.ble a heritage, where we dwell and where we may visit.

It is not well to conclude these thoughts upon the influence of scenes upon character without urging home the truth, that our ruling principle is the main index and source of character; and he is sadly deluded who trusts to any position to secure his virtue or to excuse his vices. Apt enough we are to be discontented with our lot, and to burden fate or Providence with the blame that is our own. We imagine some more favored condition to be the sure warranty of success and worth. He who lives among the crowd ascribes to their example his vices, and he who lives among the fields refers his rudeness to want of better opportunity. Older than the Satire of Horace on human discontent is the wish of man for change of fortune, even as old as man himself. Better for him to make the best of what he has, and find his content thus keeping pace with his progress.

He that dwells in the country, while he should use every opportunity for enlarging his circle of experience by travel, must take heed lest he slight the privileges of his own position. He may fall into the vices of the town among the simpler habits of his neighbors, and be eaten at heart by the worst pa.s.sion while breathing the purest airs of heaven. He must learn simple truth of a power above man, or nature will not save him from corruption.

He who lives in the city need not ascribe the evil that he suffers solely to circ.u.mstances, nor expect mental enlargement as the consequence of a cosmopolitan home. He must keep true simplicity in the midst of artificial conventions, and may narrow himself into an earthworm in the midst of the men and the culture of all climes and nations. He may be in bondage to a metropolitan mannerism which is quite as slavish as any provincial prejudice, and full as far short of a wise humanity as of a genuine faith.

Better counsel do we need than crowds can teach or nature alone can unfold. Wherever we dwell, we are to look to a kingdom not of this world, and by communion with its sovereign Head, elect Messiah and sainted intellects, we are to confirm what is best on earth by what is most gracious on high.

Still, though only in thought, need we weave our green bowers to tell us of the ancient march through the wilderness to the promised land, for still are we on our pilgrimage. Wisely do we keep the feast of tabernacles when we erect them at once in our remembrance and hope, looking upon the emblems of G.o.d's love for us in the past as the a.s.surance of his love when the soul shall reach the river whose waters never fail, and rest beneath the tree of life whose leaf never fades, whose fruit never withers.

_August._

Returning Home.

RETURNING HOME.

Two commands G.o.d gave in the beginning and is always giving to his creatures. He bids them go forth and return, and the lives of all beings are divided between the two. The history of every man is but another version of the words, "He went forth and he returned." All his enterprises and all his results may be thus simply described.

It is so common, especially in our restless time, to dwell upon the more adventurous change, that the milder is apt to be slighted, and, bent upon advancing, we make too little account of return as a primal law of life.

How can we fail to see it written on all things that G.o.d has made? It may be read upon every dew-drop whose summons back to the heavens the morning suns.h.i.+ne brings, and upon every flower whose gorgeous petals signal its triumph, and herald the retreat of its vital forces to the earth whence they came. Every rising wave murmurs also of an ebbing tide, and every beat of the pulse sends back as well as forward the current of life. The heavens--they bear majestic witness of Him who rules their hosts. The stars are ever returning upon their courses, and marking the seasons that time the periods of man. Insect, bird, and beast, follow instinctively the same great law; by their transformations, migrations and quickened or diminished vitality, they turn in the recurrent cycles in which all things have their round. In all ages, thinking minds have been impressed with this great fact. We see the impression in the early memorials of sober thought. The wise preacher brooded over it, as he spoke of winds and waters returning on their path and of there being nothing new under the sun. It haunted the visions of the sages of the Nile, and stands out to the eye in that serpent symbol which teaches from tombs and temples the circle of eternity.

Feeling themselves sometimes swept away upon this great current of events, inclosed in this serpent-fold of destiny, men have lost their proper sense of responsibility and sunk down into a pa.s.sive fatalism. From this torpor G.o.d would ever arouse us, and have us see in the return, as in the going forth, the same providential plan--the same sphere of duty and privilege.

How full of privilege is this recurrent aspect of things! Led by the hosts of heaven, the seasons walk their benign round, and in their course they are ever renewing most delightful relations of life. In the calendar of nature there are far more festivals than fasts, and, to a well-taught mind, the recurrence of the sadder times and scenes of the year brings thoughts more blessed than the world's reckless feasting. Spring and summer are always new and always cheering, whilst autumn and winter teach lessons and may nurture affections more precious than their gayer treasures. The text of nature has ever a marginal commentary taken from the book of the heart; and as the text is read and re-read, the commentary grows in size and interest, for each year's repeated interviews reveal nature and the heart more fully to each other, and give variety ever fresh to a friends.h.i.+p constant as the law of G.o.d. The great universe was made, we must believe, more for the home of rational souls than for the playground of giant ma.s.ses and powers of matter. What aspect of its vastness is more tender than that which exhibits its majestic changes as waiting upon the discipline and affections of G.o.d's children; the great sun lighting the laborer to his work, and then withdrawing its light to send him to the welcome of his home and the peace of his pillow; the whole starry host joining together to make and mark the days and months whose returning recalls some pleasant face of life and Providence, makes childhood glad, or age peaceful.

Man himself has in his own being a periodicity corresponding with the cycles of nature. His active energies, his sensibilities, social and devout, his intellectual powers, have their recurrent periods. He is strangely ignorant of his own nature, who has not learned that there are times and tides within his own soul as well as with seas and stars. The plan of the benign Deity for him seems to be such as to secure at once constancy, and variety, and progress.

Note well the constancy which G.o.d, the Ever Faithful and True, ordains for man by the recurrent order of his lot. He will not have life a chaos of scattered fragments, nor a stray meteor that follows no orbit. It must have its periods of outgoing and return. Whatever be our home, the object of our love or care, to that we must ever recur; and however capricious the humors, or eventful the career, every man's life falls into a certain circuit, and every heart revolves in some orbit by a law as sure as that which guides Arcturus and Orion. Man, indeed, may be so perverse as to abuse the law, but he cannot repeal it. He may give his heart to evil, and make his home with wickedness; but wherever he makes it, there this law finds him, and, in a round of habit good or bad, returns him after every wandering to his own place. Securing thus the constancy of his Providence, G.o.d teaches us to see the moral significance of the law of return. What a lesson is here upon the force of habit! Its power comes from G.o.d's own constancy, and woe to the man who inverts his nature so sadly, that evil instead of good walks in the appointed circuit. Every vice into which he falls constantly returns upon him, like the circling waters of the whirlpool, which run round and round until lost in the dark deep. Every good which he loves, every truth he accepts, every charity he cherishes, follows the same law; circling in the ascending order, like the vine that twines round and round its trellis, to lift its leaves and fruit into the upper air and light. The law of habit we cannot repeal, but our use of it depends upon ourselves. It is like the tides, which wait not our bidding to rise or fall, but which leave us free to launch wisdom and industry, or folly and rapine, upon their waters. The law says that man must return in his course. He must go home. Let a true life interpret the benignity of this Divine constancy.

Consider, also, the variety which comes from the action of this law. The interest of existence depends in great measure upon a due proportion of constancy and variety. Were there no uniformity, the world would be chaos, society Babel, and thought madness; there could be no external stability, no intellectual consistency; the senses would recognize no familiar things, and memory could make no reliable record. Such a condition is hardly conceivable; although feuds and wars sometimes so disturb the stability of life as to give some idea of the fatal effect of such disorder. Without variety, moreover, the Divine plan would also be broken, and a dreary monotony would brood over paradise itself. Benign Heaven has blended the two elements in our lot, so that perhaps our highest pleasure consists in the return of familiar blessings with varied circ.u.mstances;--not in absolute novelty or absolute permanence, but in scenes, friends, and pursuits ever constant and ever new. Who does not know this kindly mingling of joys? What traveller is there in distant lands--lands which his boyish fancy has so long yearned to see--who does not feel more delight in the return than in the going away? No matter what beauties or sublimities of nature and art may have feasted sense and soul, the fairest sight is his own familiar home and friends,--the sublimest thought is of the G.o.d who guarded his childhood, and whose presence he feels more deeply as the guardian of his dwelling, than as the dread Being who piled up the Alps and poured out the oceans. In any aspect of the case, it is recurrence with variety that gives our being much of its finest zest. To talk with cherished friends after absence, to revisit familiar scenes and meditate on times past and present; to perform, under new influences and encouragements, the accustomed round of duty; how much of freshest satisfaction is thus found! It is the best novelty and the truest constancy. Old things are made new by the fresh spirit infused into them, and that which the apostle states as the feeling of a first convert to the Gospel, becomes a permanent aspect of life,--"Old things are pa.s.sed away, and all things are become new."

Happy the man who understands self-discipline, so as to secure this charm, and mingle constancy and variety in his pursuits. He will divide days and years in such a way that life shall be ever more constant and more fresh.

No servile drudge to worldly care, no capricious pleasure-seeker who is always uneasy, because always sated, he will be a faithful worker and a cheerful friend, stronger for work by recreation, the wiser for enjoyment by his work,--filling his time with such varied uses, that recurrent duties shall be welcome to him each in its time, and every day's life ill.u.s.trate in some way the varied uniformity of G.o.d's plan for nature and humanity. Great obstacles, we know, lie in the way of such order; for care is often too imperious and protracted, and pleasure too engrossing, to make true method easy; but the obstacles yield before a just purpose, and, in the end, every man is the artificer of his habits. He can make his life constant to its appointed round, and varied in its constancy.

So G.o.d teaches us the moral significance of the law of return, by showing its bearing on the stability and freshness that give charm to our days.

Yet more, he teaches us to find in it the true law of progress. He bids us return, but not the same, nor to the same,--he bids us return better or worse, and to a state of things better or worse. This is a necessity, and we are called to make it a happy necessity. Not in a circle of absolute uniformity, but in a rounding path, in a spiral course, we wind our way upward or downward,--our way turning indeed ever upon itself, yet at a higher or lower mark. The very structure of language indicates that true progress is the returning of the mind towards its previous experience.

What is the acc.u.mulation of knowledge but remembering the facts of previous observation? What is wisdom but the fruit of reflection, or turning thought backward upon its course? What is repentance but conscience revising past errors? What is reformation but the whole man returning to himself and to G.o.d? It is progress that gives its most cheering aspect to the recurrent order of life.

Return then to thine own home as each day, or week, or season repeats the decree. Return to do better than you have ever done,--to see more clearly than before the demands of your position, the errors of your way of living, your indifference, perhaps unkindness, towards those who daily look to you for a nurture, better than that of peris.h.i.+ng bread. Return to thine own house, and consider whether among the guests there welcomed, the only abiding Comforter is entertained, and the good angels that go with him are not shut out. Return with thought more free to see things as they are from your temporary absence from the trammels of routine, with affections fresh from nearer companions.h.i.+p with nature, with powers renewed for the sober work of life. Let fortune smile or frown more than of old, make sure of your own soul, and do better than you have done.

Constant and varied in many respects our life must be. G.o.d bids us add progress to the constancy and variety that he has decreed. True to him, our days in their returning order, their various events, their steady progress, shall go forward, like the march of the faithful host to the promised land, their step responsive, their way opening new attractions, their course ever onward, and above them, swelling sweet and clear, that glorious psalm of jubilee, which in its rhythmic verse and progressive flow ever returns upon the same rapturous burden, and repeats the hallowed anthem, "His mercy endureth for ever."

Let this be our spirit, and we shall know how wonderfully G.o.d reconciles two things apparently contradictory; we shall know, that the greater our progress, the surer our return,--that more and more the blessed scenes and friends of early days shall come back to us. Memory shall mate with hope to cheer us, and the evening of life shall add to its own tranquil beauty the fairest charms from the morning of our days. The aged man turns ever fondly to his childhood, and may enter the kingdom of heaven like a little child, even before death unlocks its gates of eternity.

What a thought here opens--opens to us as we return to our homes, and think of some who return no more! Beyond these homes, the orbit of our being reaches, and one, nay, many call to us, "Come." Over the grave the decree is still more solemnly heard. The words, "Thou sayest, return, ye children of men," mean more, far, than "dust to dust." "Return, ye children of men." "Dust to the dust whence it was,--the spirit to G.o.d who gave it."

Christ repeats the call in more than the Hebrew's faith, in more, far more than the philosopher's hope. Futurity as revealed by him is the way homeward to Him from whom our being came,--to all the faithful and lovely, who have blessed man and glorified G.o.d. We will not scorn the philosopher's hope of earthly cycles recurring in progressive order, until our globe bears the perfected harvest of a truer civilization, and all nature comes to herself. This hope is well, but does not go far enough. As we and those dear to us leave the earth, we crave word of a return more blessed than any dream of earthly kingdoms and ages. We crave what G.o.d has given us. The soul about to go into a region by itself unexplored, yearns to know that the path is not to night and nothingness, but is a return and more than a return to G.o.d, the Eternal Father, and to the mansions that gather from all earthly homes their purest treasures, and transfigure them in the light of heaven.

_September._

The Church in the House.

THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE.