a ceaseless endeavour to obtain value for value in material things; a strong determination not to be defrauded, if they can prevent it, in material things. British legislators, for example, have provided that "No sum or sums of Money, or other thing, shall be taken, raised, taxed, rated, imposed, paid, or levied for or in regard of any provisions, carriages, or purveyance for his majesty, his heirs or successors." 1 All quite rightly; 1° but, I repeat, the Market-place covers but a small part of the field of human interest. It is a miserable thing-most miserable either for legislators or private men to be shrewd only in cash transactions. It is not to a man's honour to be shrewd in cash transactions alone. Outside the Cotton Exchange and the Metal Market, and enclosing the same, lies all the Universe teeming with boundless interests to the awakened and seeing Soul-interests ramifying up to Heaven above and down to Hell beneath. He should be shrewd in these too. In a word, it is reasonably required of all persons to carry their practical prudence with them-their shrewdness (upon which some people are so apt to plume themselves)-beyond the ugly purlieus of the Market-place; to bring it into the Universe of Boundless Blue lying outside the Precincts of the Commercial, and to make rational use of it in all the grand concerns of the Soul. They ask generally, and rightly require, value for value at the stall and in the shop. They should exercise the same common-sense and make similar requisitions throughout the enclosing Space. As Eschylus says: "Wise is the man who knows what profiteth, Not he who knoweth much." 21. Immensity of Spiritual Truth and Fact as compared with Material Truth and Fact.-As men and women we are acquainted with two great classes of Truths and Facts-namely, the Spiritual and the Material. Consider the relative significance of each class. Let us approach the subject in our most deliberate, cool, and calculating mood, and be as serious in the business as if we were dealing with "City Facts and Figures," purchasing stocks and shares, or making an investment in cotton or pig-iron. 22. From the secular point of view, take the most prosperous person in the World in any walk of life-a merchant, say, like Anton Fugger of Augsburg,1 to whom wealth blows with every breeze. Obviously it is all marked perishable. At the very outside it is only worth a few years', perhaps it is not worth an hour's, purchase. His bubble is always about to burst. 23. Take a lawyer whose table is continually covered with briefs extravagantly endorsed, whose eloquence is heard in every court; this man, in his prosperous secularity, will, of course, be as extinct as his eloquence after a very limited number of blue moons. 24. Take a politician who has probably hallucinated himself and prosperously deceived the masses" all his life from magazine page and from his carriage window at railway stations as well as from public platform and Government Bench: this man, too, in his prosperous secularity, will also be as dead as the sound of him within a brief period-except as to the harvest of Dead Sea fruits resulting from his labours. The very fame of such a man is craziness and rottenness, offensive to the nostrils of Gods and good ་ 1 See an account of the wealth of this house. Carlyle, Crit. and Misc. Essays,' Vol. ii., note, p. 314. men even while he treads the surface of Terra Firma. 25. A Dandy and a Spiritual Warrior.-Strange sights, indeed, are to be seen upon the Periphery of this Terrestrial Ball. Here is a dandy coming along the street. He has inserted his feet into blameless boots; his garments fit him as well as if they had grown upon his body; his hat reflects the very glory of the Sun in the Heavens; his neckgear is faultless of its kind; he carries a capital umbrella, perfectly braced up, to encounter meteorological contingencies; his tailor and general outfitter can do no more for him. He looks satisfied with himself: the material world is for him.1 On the other hand, here is a spiritual warrior wrestling with the Devil, or perhaps enduring affliction not for anything material at all, but actually over his sins like the penitent in the Psalms, who cried : Save me for the waters are come into my soul I sink in deep mire where there is no standing I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. Thou knowest my foolishness and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee be ashamed for my sake." Contrast the relative significance of two such persons. Materially considered, the dandy has undoubtedly the best of the bargain. Spiritually? Ultimately, in any case, one would think it must be a poor outlook for a man when his hat is the most shining thing about him! Disregard your moral bearings on the Voyage of Life, and you are lost. 66 26. A snob on Mount Sinai.-"Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on 1 But let no injustice be done. Some of these fellows have developed fine manhood on the battlefield. All honour to such. Their initial disfigurement was probably due, in great measure, to a paltry "education." Few men are educated as men. the top of the Mount.' Think of a snob on Mount Sinai ! Think of a worshipper of the trivial trying to gain a footing beside the man Moses on the Mount of God! Let us hope that the whole race of snobs would become extinct if they would only permit themselves to reflect for a moment on the incongruity of such a scene. 27. Gastronomers and Gasteropods.-Here is a poor fellow, a gastronomer, whose body rules his soul. He is degenerating more and more into mere gizzard every day he lives. Side by side with him consider one whose main object in eating and drinking is (without any claim to ascetic value) that he may be able to do some good work in the world-trying, for example, to govern himself and to leaven the heads of his fellow-creatures with heroic ideals. Corporeally or materially viewed, the two men may seem to be very much alike: much alike: both of them, without controversy, are destined for the dust. But spiritually viewed and contemplated they give rise to very different thoughts. In spiritual vision what is a gastronomer better than a gasteropod? Whilst the contemplation of the noble worker must be good for the soul, lifting it up, perhaps, to visions of cherubim and seraphim. It must be one of the most vital functions of great Literature to draw out such contrasts. 28. "Adventures are to the Adventurous. are "Adventures are to the Adventurous." Think of one whose message to Man is-Buy Blacking of a certain Brand! Contrast him, say, with David Livingstone toiling and dying for the reclamation and the civilisation of a continent. It must be quite obvious, I think, to candid thinkers that all the facts and truths and ideas arising from the contemplation of the Blacking advertiser, however extensive the range of his enterprise, must, in respect of his particular ambition, be of the most trifling interest and importance as compared with the interests aroused by David Livingstone and his labours. Men's lives must be contemptible when their ambitions are contemptible. Greatness can only belong to those who act greatly. "Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic, makes heroes." 1 29. Charles Darwin and the Apostle Paul.Charles Darwin's great message to his Generation was-"You are descended from a fish with a swim-bladder"; that of the Apostle Paul-“Put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil, for we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Contrast the speculator on the swim-bladder, obsessed by the craze that Man is only a kind of developed fish, with the Apostle militant against the Devil, and trying to rouse us up to put on the whole armour of God! Heaven and Earth! It is difficult to ally and associate a codfish with a Martyr! Whatever the failings of the Theologian may be, there can be no Salvation for us in the Zoologian. The literary man should be found drawing attention to these things. 30. The intrinsic splendour of the Spiritual.-In whatever field of inquiry we may choose, the material and the secular, in respect of their intrinsic significance, seem to be as nothing beside the spiritual. The patriot soldier is among the noblest of persons, but a general, or a king, or an emperor prosperously slaughtering multitudes of people for worldly thrones and possessions, is intrinsically of 1 Disraeli, Coningsby.' |