Part 12

"For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along Round the earth's electric circle the swift flash of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sounded fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-- In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim." LOWELL.

One of the most reliable supports of that which is best in man is faith in other men. In truth, I believe that no man can lose his faith in men and women, and remain as good a man as he was before the loss. Better evidence that a man is rotten in some portion of his character, or rotten clean through his character, cannot be found than real, or pretended, loss of faith in his fellows. When a young man tells me that he has no doubt that certain persons, publicly reputed to be good, take sly drinks in their own closets, and descend into grosser indulgences when in strange places; that the best men are hypocrites; that there is no such thing as womanly virtue; and that appetite and selfishness outweigh everywhere principle and manly honor, I know that, ninety-nine times in one hundred, he finds a reason in his own heart and life for his declarations. I know that he simply wishes to maintain a certain degree of self-respect, and that he finds no way to do this save by bringing everybody around him down to his own level. A man who has lost his virtue, and is still suffering under the blows of conscience, is very both to believe that there is any virtue in the world.

Yet there are circumstances in which faith in humanity is lost without fault, though never without damage, on the part of the loser; and very sad cases they are. I remember an abused, broken-hearted, and forsaken wife, who declared to me her belief that her husband was no worse than other men (pleasant for me, wasn't it?)--that there was not a man in the world who could withstand temptation, or who would have done differently from her husband under the same circumstances. Why was this? She had loved this man with all the devotion of which her warm woman's heart was capable; she had respected him as an embodiment of all manly qualities; he had impersonated her beau ideal. If he--the peerless, the prince--could fall, and forsake, and forget, who would not? He who had once been to her the noblest and best man in the world, could never become worse than the rest of the world. Now one of the foulest wrongs and one of the deepest injuries which this man had inflicted upon his wife was the destruction of her faith in men. He had not only blotted out her faith in him, but he had blotted out her faith in humanity, and, of course, her faith in herself. What safeguards of her own virtue fell when her faith in man was destroyed, she did not know; but, in her innermost consciousness, she must have grown careless of herself-- possibly desperate.

Hardly a month passes by in which we do not hear of some defalcation, some lapse from integrity, by a man who, through many years of business life, had maintained an untarnished reputation. I have half a dozen such cases in my memory now, and I do not know what to make of them. When I see a character standing to-day above all reproach, compacted through many years of manly, honest, Christian living, overthrown to-morrow, and trodden in the mire, I am shocked. If such men fall, where are we to look for those who will not? If such men, with worthy natures, and long practice of virtue, and myriad motives for the maintenance of an unspotted character, yield to temptation, and are suddenly overthrown, what reason have I to suppose that my partner, my brother, myself, shall escape? I am scared, and grow cautious, and suspicious.

Did you ever think that there is one individual, at least, in the world--that possibly there are ten individuals, possibly one hundred, possibly more--who believe that you are, as a man or a woman, just as nearly right as you can be? Did you ever think that there are people who pin their faith to you, who believe in you, who trust you, and that among those people your own reputation is identified with the reputation of the race? I care not how humble a man may be, there are always those who trust in him. Think of the trust which a family of children repose in their parents, and of the faith which the parents have in their children. Very humble the parents may be--very untrustworthy as moral guides, and judges, and authorities; but if they were angels, with the light of heaven in their eyes, they would not be more confided in and relied upon by the little ones who cling to their knees. So, at all ages, we garner our faith in individuals; and so, all men and women, however humble and unworthy they may be, become the objects and recipients of this faith.

Now, if there be ten men and women who have garnered their faith in me--who believe in me, through and through--and whose faith in all humanity would be sadly shocked, if I should fall, and prove to them that their confidence had been entirely misplaced, then I hold for those ten persons the reputation of the human race in my hands. If you, my reader, have attracted to yourself the honest faith of a thousand hearts, then you hold in your hands, for those hearts, the good name of humanity. Upon the shoulders of each man in the community, there rests a great responsibility. He has not only his own reputation to take care of, but he has the reputation of his race. If all mankind are to be thought more meanly of by mankind, to be less trusted, and less loved, because I have been untrue, though my untruth touch but one person directly, I commit a great crime against my race. Yet this crime is nothing by the side of that which I commit against those who have trusted in me. It injures them to think meanly of mankind--to have their confidence shaken in humanity--much more than it injures humanity to be thought meanly of. A man may as well stab me as to destroy my faith in my kind, for the comfort and happiness of my life depend upon the maintenance of this faith.

There are not a few men and women in this world who are thoroughly conscious that not only their immediate personal friends think better of them than they deserve, but that the community--all who know them--accord to them a higher excellence of heart and life than they really possess. There are some who seem fitted by nature to attract the affection, and secure the respect of all those with whom they come into contact, in a very remarkable degree; and, yet, these persons may be painfully conscious, all the while, that they are not so good as they are thought to be. They are not hypocrites; they have never intended to deceive anybody; they have never pretended to be what they are not; but people believe in them without limit. A person who has this power of attracting the confidence of men has forced upon him an immense responsibility. To say nothing of his duty to himself and his God, he owes it to his race to be, or to become, as good as he seems. It is essentially a crime against humanity for one who draws the hearts of men to him easily, to do any thing which will tend to depreciate their estimate of his character. A man should carry a life thus extravagantly over-estimated, as he would carry a cup of wine--careful that none be spilled, and careful that no impurity fall into it. It is a great blessing to be loved and respected-- nay to be admired for admirable qualities--and when men are generous enough to pay in advance for excellence, they should never be cheated in the amount and quality of the article.

There is such a thing as honor among men; there are such things as modesty, truth, and integrity. They are qualities that belong to humanity, irrespective of religion and of Christian culture. There are men so true to their higher natures that I would trust them with my name, my gold, my children, my all, without a doubt. I am proud to claim kinship with such men. They confer dignity upon the race of which I am a member. I am glad to take their hands in mine. Suppose one of these--or such things have been-- should deceive me, and I should discover that my name had been abused, my gold wasted or stolen, and my children ruined by this man: could I ever trust again? Should I not be humiliated? Should I not feel disgraced? Should I ever be willing to let another man into my heart? Should I not doubt whether there are, indeed, such things as honor, and modesty, and truth, and integrity, in the world; and thus doubting, would not the strongest defences of my own virtue be thrown down? The truth is, that no man can do an unmanly thing without inflicting an injury on the whole human race. No man can say "I will do as I choose, and it will be nobody's business." Every man's sin is everybody's business, literally. Every sin shakes men's confidence in men, and becomes, whatever its origin, the enemy of mankind; and all mankind have a right to make common cause in its extermination.

I once heard a careless fellow say that he "professed nothing and lived up to it;" but "professing nothing" does not exonerate a man at all, so far as relates to the personal maintenance of honor, purity, and truth. The man who would excuse a lapse from virtue, or any obliquity of conduct, on the ground that he did not profess any thing, simply announces to me the execrable proposition that every man has a kind or degree of right to be a rascal until he pledges himself to be something better. There are altogether too many men in the world who am keeping themselves easy with the thought that if they are not very good, they never pretended or professed to be,--as if this failure publicly to pronounce themselves on the side of the highest morality, were a sufficient apology for minor delinquencies! It seems to be a poultice of poppies to some sensitively inflamed consciences, that, whatever they may have done, they have never broken promises voluntarily made, to do right--as if there were a release from the obligation to do right, in failing to make the promise! If it will help a man to do right, publicly to profess to do right, and to do good to other men by placing his influence on the right side, then the first duty a man owes to his race, is to make this declaration. But I will not linger here, because my words have led me to the discussion of the obligations of those who have made a profession of Christianity, and taken upon themselves the vows of Christian church-membership.

When a man joins a Christian church, he becomes related to that church in the same way that nature makes him related to humanity. The reputation of the church is placed in his keeping. He cannot do an unchristian thing without injury to the church, or without depreciating, in the eyes of the world, every other member. Think what a blow is inflicted upon the church of Jesus Christ by such scandalous immoralities as some of its most prominent members have been guilty of--by forgeries, and adulteries, and drunkenness! These cases are not common, but when they occur, they are blows under which the church reels. The outside world looks on, and scoffs: "Aha! That's your Christianity, is it?"

I declare that I do not know of a position that more strongly appeals to a man's personal honor than that of membership in a Christian church. Even if a man in such a position should say within himself: "This costs more than it comes to. I love my vices more than I love the Master whose name I profess. Either openly or secretly, I will give rein to my appetites and passions"--he should be arrested by the consideration that he proposes to do that which will wound the feelings, and degrade the position, and injure the influence, of thousands of the best men and women in the world; that he proposes to inflict an irreparable injury upon a cause which has never injured him, and whose office it is to save him, and all mankind. Perhaps he is so weak, and temptation is so strong, that he feels, in the stress of his trial, that he can afford to perjure his own soul; but if he does, he has no right to wound others. Better fight the devil until the animal within us bleeds at every vein--until it dies, if that must be-- than "offend one of these little ones." A man who will join a church, and then lead an unchristian life, not only demonstrates before the world his hypocrisy, but he voluntarily undertakes to prove that he has no personal honor. An honorable man will sacrifice himself always before he will voluntarily inflict injury upon a cause he has pledged himself to sustain, and upon men and women whose good name is in his hands. When a member of a church has become so hardened in a course of bad living, that no pang comes to him when he thinks of the injury he is inflicting upon the Christian church, he is bad enough for a prison. I would not trust him the length of my arm.

We have had, within the last ten years, too many notable instances of falls from virtue among the clergy; and every fall has been like an avalanche. They come from a point so near to heaven, and fall so far, that mountain-sides are scarred and whole communities whelmed by the calamity. It takes, often, many years for the villages that lie at their feet to smile again. All Christendom feels the shock, and mourns with downcast eyes the consequences. I freely grant that, as a class, the American clergy, of all denominations, are the purest and best men whom I know; but I cannot resist the conviction that there are many of them who forget what the responsibility is that rests upon them. It was the remark of an aged clergyman, retired from pulpit duties, that if he were a layman he should watch with more anxiety and carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. There shall never be an improper word spoken; there shall never be a deed committed that would bring a blush to the most sensitive cheek; yet a susceptible woman in the society of a minister of strong and magnetic sympathies, may become as passive as a babe. Led toward him by her religious nature, attracted and held by his intellectual power and the graces of his language, yielding to him her confidence, it is not strange that, before she is aware, she is a captive without a captor, a victim without an enemy, a wreck without a destroyer.

Now I know that there is not a pastor of a strong and graceful and sympathetic nature who reads these words without understanding what I mean--who does not know that there are women in his congregation who are, either consciously or unconsciously, the slaves of his will. I have no doubt that there are some such pastors who will read this essay with a flush of guilt upon their faces. They have never meant these women any ill--they would not harm them for the world--but they are conscious of a selfish and most unchristianly pleasure in these conquests of female natures-- these parlor triumphs, God forgive them! Perhaps they go further, and, by the lingering, fervent pressure of a hand, or the glance of an eye, or the utterance of some bit of gallantry or flattery, send into a woman's heart an unwomanly and an unchristian thought. Perhaps they take special delight in the society of some half a dozen female members of their flock, and find themselves dressing for them--betraying to them their weaknesses--opening, in various ways, avenues by which the quick eyes and instincts of these women can see directly into them. The number of pastors is not small, I think, who are not aware that there is one woman, or that there are some women, who know more of what is in them, to their disadvantage, than any man--that before certain lenient--possibly sad and forgiving eyes--they stand as men who indulge in essentially unchristian vanities of purpose and life.

Of all woman-killers in this world, I know of none so disgusting as one whose chosen profession it is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A clerical fop, a ministerial gallant, a man who preaches the love of God on Sunday, and lays snares for an innocent heart on Monday afternoon, is a disgrace to Christianity, and a sad burden to the Christian cause. Does such a man think that he can add a little zest to a leisure hour and a humdrum life, by toying with a tender friendship, and giving lease and latitude to his desire for personal conquest, and yet that no one shall know it? Ah, the fallacy! I know of eminent clergymen-- earnest workers--who, by yielding to this desire once, have been shorn of their power for good forever, so far as those are concerned who really know them and their weakness. There are ministers in America before whom strong men tremble, and great congregations bow themselves, who could be laughed to scorn and smothered in a cloud of blushes, by some girl to whom, in a weak moment, they betrayed the vain heart that beats within them. Ah! ye men of the black coat and the white neck-cloth--toying with women, under whatever disguise; indulging in the vanity of personal power, however ingeniously you mask it, is not for you. You can never do it without an injury to the religion which you profess to preach. If you find that you are too weak to resist these temptations--and they are great to such as you--then you should leave the desk forever. You, at least, are bound in personal honor to quit the public advocacy of a cause which your private life dishonors.

Easy to preach, you say? Easier to preach than practise? Nobody knows it better than I--unless it be you. I do not expect perfection in this world, of anybody;--I do not expect impossibilities of anybody. But there are certain duties which men owe to humanity and their race, and which members of Christian churches and teachers of Christian churches owe to Christianity and to their brotherhood, which are possible to be performed, and which I insist upon. I do not appeal to the highest motives--at least I do not appeal to religious motives. I appeal to personal honor. I say that every man, high or low, is bound in honor so to conduct himself as not to disgrace humanity--as not to shake the confidence of men in human honor. I say that every man who belongs to a Christian church--no matter what his internal life may be--is bound in honor so to carry himself before men and women, that the Christian name receive no damage and the Christian cause no prejudice in their eyes. Every man carries the burden of his race and his brotherhood; and if he be a man, he will neither ignore it nor try to shake it off.

LESSON XVIII.

SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS.

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain?" SHAKSPEARE.

"I have gnashed My teeth in darkness till returning morn, Then cursed myself till sunset; I have prayed For madness as a blessing; 'tis denied me." BYRON.

Alessandra. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing Thy happiness--what ails thee, cousin of mine? Why didst thou sigh so deeply? "Castiglione. Did I sigh? I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion, A silly--a most silly fashion I have When I am very happy. Did I sigh?" POE.

There is a hill opposite to my window, up which, during all the long and weary day, horses are drawing heavy loads. The majority of them crawl patiently along, with their heads down and with reeking flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies that vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short and stumpy tails to protect their quivering sides. Some of these animals are not so patient, but are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have noticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad time every morning with his first load. He is what the teamsters call "balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much coaxing and not a little whipping seem necessary to get him started; and then he plunges into his work as if he were determined to tear his harness and his load all in pieces. I notice that there are certain unusual fixtures about his collar, and learn that the poor animal has a galled shoulder, so raw and inflamed that all his first efforts in the morning are attended by pain, and that he only works well after the flesh has become benumbed by pressure. I ask his driver why he does not turn the creature into the pasture, and let the ulcer heal, and am told that he has been treated thus repeatedly, but that it always returns when labor is resumed. There is a livery stable that I visit frequently; and while I wait to be served I notice what the grooms are doing. I see that when the currycomb or brush touches a certain spot upon the horse's skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a squeal,-- possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. I learn, too, that there is a certain place upon the back of every horse that the grooms are not permitted to bathe with cold water.

These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive spots on horses have very faithful counterparts in the minds and characters of men. I do not know that I ever met a man who had not on him, somewhere, a sore spot, or a tender spot, or a sensitive spot--a spot that would either gall under the collar of labor, or bring on hysterics if harshly rubbed, or communicate a damaging shock to the nervous system when suddenly cooled. Very few men arrive at thirty-five years of age without getting galled, and very few entirely recover from the abrasion while they live. The spot never thoroughly heals, and the old collar only needs to be put on, even after the longest period of rest, to develop the ulcer in the same old place. I heard a young clergyman preach recently, and I instantly learned that he had a sore spot under his collar. He was a young man of fine powers, bold intellect, a strong love of freedom, and a will determined to do honor to his convictions. He had formed his own opinion upon certain points of doctrine, and had insisted upon it in the presence of his elders. The consequence was that he had been bitterly opposed, and was with great difficulty settled over his parish. The screws had been put tightly down upon him, and he had felt, in the very depths of his sensitive soul, that the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free had been tampered with. So he could neither pray nor preach without showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did not betray it by refusing to draw at all; but he drew violently, as if he had been hitched to the leg of an obtuse Doctor of Divinity, and intended to give all the other Doctors of Divinity notice to get out of the way. Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is sure to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, until he puts on another kind of collar. The same old sting will be in all his preaching--a tinge of personal feeling--that the masses of those who hear him preach will not understand, and that he, at last, will become unconscious of. Ministers have more sore places under their harnesses than any class of men I know of.

A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, in his advocacy of them, has rubbed against the fixed opinions or prejudices of the people to which he is called to preach, is very sure to get sore; and he will either wince with the friction or oppose himself to it with violence. His soreness will always be calling attention to that which caused it, so that if his wound was procured in the advocacy of some infernal doctrine like "infant damnation," why, infant damnation will seem to become a very precious doctrine to him, and he will always be talking about it, and enforcing it. If he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or any other public wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persistently opposed by any portion of his charge, he will betray the sore under his collar on all occasions, and very possibly become so fractious and violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him out to pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction of any particular collar seems to feel that it is necessary for him to wear that particular collar all the time; and he fails to remember that the reason why he has so much feeling with this collar on, is that it has made him sore. Not unfrequently he becomes so sensitive and so nervous that he kicks out of the traces, and runs away with, and smashes up, the vehicle to which he is attached.

No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and violence of the advocates of special reforms comes from wearing too long the collar of the public apathy, or the public contempt. The men are very few, who, with the consciousness of being actuated by a good motive, can work against opposition a long time, without getting sore, and without betraying their soreness, either by stubbornness or violence. Touch them anywhere but upon the galled spot, and they will be as calm as clocks, and as good-natured as kittens; touch them there, and we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and a nip at the shoulder. Heartless practical jokers understand where "the raw" is, and know exactly what to say to provoke a galled man to make a fool of himself.

The conscience is very liable to become sore with friction. One entire section of the American nation became sore, even to madness, with working in the collar of the world's condemnation. The slave States of America were very comfortable with slavery so long as they could hold it with self-respect, and so long as the world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a constitutional rag between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces for materials with which to soften the cushion, and set the Christian church to making padding. Every thing failing to produce the desired result, and relieve them of their pain, they refused to draw their portion of the national load, kicked the Union in pieces, and ran away. They will never be happy again until slavery is abolished, or the attitude of the nation and of the world towards slavery is changed. This sore under the collar will never heal, either in or out of the Union, until the cause shall in some way be removed.

It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A man cannot long wear a collar that presses upon his conscience, without getting through the skin--down upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor to his neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for it, or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his conscience has a raw place upon it, and that it gives him trouble. When a woman takes particular pains to tell me that she is exceedingly economical, and that she really has had nothing for a year, I cannot but conclude that she has been making some expenditure, or some series of expenditures, that she knows she cannot afford, and that there is a raw place upon her conscience in consequence. In truth, I have never known a woman who wished to impress me with a sense of her rigid economy, who was not more anxious to convince herself of it than me. When a man undertakes to soften the character of any crime by apologies, and by arguments, it is invariably for the purpose of relieving its pressure upon a galled conscience, or shaping it to a different place. I am afraid the men are few who have escaped a galled spot upon their consciences.

Pride has had a terrible time of it in the world. It is, perhaps, the most sensitive spot in human nature. Collars, curry-combs, and cold water have alike served to torment it. A great multitude of men and women have been obliged to work in the collar of poverty, against a galled pride, during all their life. They never start in the morning without flinching, and never work without violence, until their pride has become entirely benumbed by pressure. Ah! if society could be unveiled, how few would be found with pride free from scars and raw places! I once heard a simple boy tell a young man that his legs were crooked; and though the lad was very innocent, and only supposed that he had made and announced a pleasant discovery, he had, alas! hit the man's pride on the very centre of its soreness and sensitiveness. One never knows, in large things, where he will hit the sensitive places in the pride of those he meets; but in little things he is pretty sure to learn it concerning everybody. It is always safe to suppose that a very small man is sore on the subject of bodily dimensions. It will never do for a tall man to propose to measure altitude with him in the presence of women. It is never safe to inquire the age of any lady whom one knows to be more than twenty-five years old. There is not one man or woman in a hundred who possesses an unpleasant personal peculiarity, without getting a galled spot upon personal pride in consequence. A long nose, a squint eye, a clumsy foot, a low forehead, a hump in the back--any one of these will not bear mention in the presence of its possessor.

It is quite amusing to witness the various methods resorted to for cheating the world with regard to these sore places in personal pride. Men who are conscious that they do not possess a particle of musical taste, and are really ignorant of the difference between Dundee and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be "very fond of music," and will not unfrequently convince themselves that they are so. Men who are exceedingly sensitive touching any eccentricities of person, will be constantly joking about their own long noses, or red hair, or big feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of way, and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has passed her hour of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their lot--determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the surface of her personal pride. The trick of keeping up the appearances of wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one; and though if rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted in to the end of time. It is often very pitiful to witness the ingenuity of the efforts that are made to cover from public observation the soreness of personal pride, caused by a change of circumstances. The Hepsibah Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables.