Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

Depend upon it “A Society for the Improved Furnishing of Poor Men’s Homes” would be a step taken in the seven-leagued boots for the elevation of poor men’s and women’s lives.

People Who Have Good Impulses

There is a raw material in humanity – often very raw – called impulse, or enthusiasm; and some people are very proud of possessing this spasmodic excellence. They talk glibly of their “good impulses,” their “noble impulses,” their “generous impulses,” but the fact is that the majority of impulses are neither good nor noble; while they are, of all guides in human affairs, the most questionable. For impulses do not come from settled principles, but rather from a loose habit of mind – a mind just drifting along, and ready to accept any new suggestion as an “impulse,” an “inspiration,” a “command.” We believe far too readily the cant about emotion, and erratic genius, and suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by fussy, impulsive people; for if we are at all allied with such, it is impossible to escape imposition; since we have to be patient enough for two, and so bear an undue burden of civility and good manners.

It may be said that such a discipline is not to be despised, and could be made a lesson of spiritual grace. But if we are not sick, why should we take medicine? Lessons God sets us, He helps us to learn, but there are no promises for those who impose penance upon themselves. And it is a penance to associate with impulsive, fussy persons; for no matter how good their impulses are, they are simply nowhere – as far as noble, enduring work is concerned – beside well-considered plans, carried out by cool, consistent people, who know what can be done and do it, – just as much next year as this year; just as well in one place as in another.

Ministers of the gospel know this fact perhaps better than any other mortals. They are constantly finding out how uncertain a quantity good impulses are to depend upon. For they have not the habit of materializing into good actions; they are evanescent pretenders to righteousness; they tell more flattering tales than ever Hope told. All too soon the practical, calm minister discovers that impulse and enthusiasm are but rudimentary virtues, and seldom available for any real, good work. The men of service, either in spiritual or temporal work, are men whom nothing hurries or flurries; who are never in haste, and never too late. They are not men of impulse, but of consideration. Whether they are going to deliver a sermon or keep a momentous appointment, to get a high office or a sum of money, or merely to catch an express train, they are perfectly cool, and always in time. Of course, impulsive people keep appointments and catch trains, but oh, what a fuss they make about it!

Unfortunately, calm, grand natures are not of indigenous growth, and we do not do all we might to cultivate them. If we took more time to think, we should be less impulsive, more reasonable, less shallow. If we made less haste, we should make more speed. “Slow and sure win the race” is a proverb embodying a great truth. Fussy, impulsive people never get at the bottom of things, never give an impartial judgment, never are masters of any difficult situation; for the power of deliberation, of staving off personal likes and dislikes, of waiting, of knowing when to wait and when to move, – are powers invariably linked with a cool head and a clear, calm will. But none of these grand qualities come at the call of impulse. Even good impulses are of no practical value until they crystallize into good deeds. Without this result the impulse or the intention to do great things may be a serious spiritual danger; the soul may satisfy itself with its impulses and designs, and rest upon them; forgetting what place of ineffectual regret is paved with good intentions.

In a certain sense it is true that the power of taking things in a cool, practical way is often an affair of the pulse, and so many beats, more or less, per minute, make a person fussy or serene. But it is only true in measure. Forethought and preparation – realizing what is likely to happen, and what is best to be done – are great helps to keeping cool and calm. The will also can work miracles. I believe in the will because I believe that the human will is God’s grace. Those who say, “I cannot” are those who think, “I will not.” Besides which there are heavenly powers that wait to help our infirmities. Paul did not hesitate to pray for the removal of his physical infirmity, and the “sufficient grace” that was promised him will be just as freely given to us. Indeed, I may rest the question here, for this is our great consolation: one cannot say too much of the Divine help. It will keep all in perfect peace that trust in it.

Worried to Death

To say “we are worried to death” is a common expression; but do we really comprehend the terrible truth of the remark? Do we realize that the hounds of care and anxiety and fretful inability may actually tear and torment us into paresis, or paralysis, or dementia, and as virtually worry us to death, as a collie dog worries a sheep, or a cat worries a mouse? And yet, if we are Christian men and women, worrying is just the one thing not needful; for there are more than sixty admonitions in the Bible against it; and the ground is so well covered by them that between the first “Fear not” and the last, every unnecessary anxiety is met, and there is not a legitimate subject for worrying left.

Are we troubled about meat and money matters? We are told to “consider the fowls of the air; they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”

Have we some malignant enemy to fight? Fear not! “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Are we in sorrow? “I, even I, am He that comforteth you.”

Are we in doubt and perplexity? “I will bring the blind by a way that they know not. I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.”

Do we fear that our work is beyond our strength? “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might, He increaseth strength.”

Are we sick? He has promised to make all our bed in our sickness.

Do we fear death? He has assured us that in the valley and shadow of death He will be with us.

Is the worry not for ourselves, but for wife and children that will be left without support and protection? Even this last anxiety is provided for. “Leave thy fatherless children to me, and let thy widows trust in me, and I will preserve them alive.”

Now, if we really believe that God made these promises, how shameful is our distrust! Do we think that God will not keep His word? Do we doubt His good-will toward us? When He says that He will make all things work together for our good, is the Holy One lying to our sorrowful hearts? Thirty years ago I was thrown helpless, penniless, and friendless upon these assurances of God; and in thirty years He has never broken a promise. He is a God that keepeth both mercy and truth. I believe in His goodness. I trust in His care. I would not, by worrying, tell Him to His face that He either has not the power or the good-will to help and comfort me.

Worriers live under a very low sky. They allow nothing for probabilities and “Godsends.” They suffer nothing to go by faith. All times and all places supply them with material. In summer, it is the heat and the dogs and the hydrophobia. In winter, it is the cold, and the price of coal. They take all the light and comfort out of home pleasures; and abroad their complaints are endless. Yet to argue with worriers is of little use; convince them at every point, and the next moment they return to their old aggravating, vaporing credo.

What remains for them then? They must pray to God, and help themselves. Egotism and selfishness are at the bottom of all worrying. If they will just remember that there is no reason why they should be exempted from the common trials of humanity, they may step at once on to higher ground; for even worrying is humanized, when it is no longer purely selfish and personal.

It is usually idle people who worry. Men and women whose every hour is full of earnest business do not try to put two hours’ care and thought into one. Even a positive injury or injustice drops easily from an honestly busy man. He has not time to keep a catalogue of his wrongs, and worry about them. He simply casts his care upon Him who has promised to care for him – for his health, and wealth, and happiness, and good name; for all the events of his life, and for all the hopes of his future.

Worriers would not like to see written down all the doubtful things they have said of God, and all the ill-natured things they have said of men; besides, they might consider that they are often righteously worried, and only suffering the due reward of some folly of their own. Would it not be better to ask God to put right what they have put wrong; to lay hold of all that is good in the present; to refuse to look forward to any possible change for the worse? I know a good man who, when he feels inclined to worry over events, takes a piece of paper and writes his fears down, and so faces “the squadron of his doubts,” – finding generally that they vanish as they are mustered.

Come, let us take Cheerfulness as a companion. Let us say farewell to Worrying. Cheerfulness will bid us ignore perplexities and annoyances; and help us to rise above them. God loves a cheerful liver; and when we consider the sin and sorrow, the poverty and ignorance, on every side of us, we may well hold our peace from all words but those of gratitude and thanksgiving. Worrying is self-torment. It is always preparing “for the worst,” and yet never fit to meet it. Cheerfulness is a kind of magnanimity; it listens to no repinings; it outlooks shadows; it turns necessity to glorious gain; and so breathing on every gift of God, Hope’s perpetual joy, it enables us, mid pleasant yesterdays, and confident to-morrows, —

To travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness.

The Grapes We Can’t Reach

The grapes we can’t reach are not, as a general thing, sour grapes; and it is a despicable kind of philosophy that asserts them to be so. Why should we despise good things because we do not possess them? Cicero, indeed, says that “if we do not have wealth, there is nothing better and nobler than to despise it.” But this assertion was artificial in the case of Cicero, and it is no nearer the truth now than it was two thousand years ago.

In fact, on the question of money this dictum appeals to us with great force; for though it may be true that some of the best things of life cannot be bought with money, it is equally true that there are other good things that nothing but money can buy. Therefore, to follow Cicero’s advice and despise wealth if we have not got it, is to despise a great many excellent things; and not only that, it is to despise also the power of imparting these excellent things to other people. The golden grapes may be out of our reach, but we need not say the fruit is sour; rather let us give thanks that others have been able to gather and press the rich vintage and to give graciously to the world of its wine of consolation.

In the same way it has long been, fashionable to assert a contempt for “the bubble reputation,” whether sought on the battlefield or in the senate, or forum, or study. But why despise one of the grandest moral forces in the universe? For when a man can get out of self to follow the fortunes of an idea, when he can fall in love with a cause, when he can fight for some public good, when he can forfeit life, if need be, for his conviction, the “reputation” that is sure to follow such abnegation and courage is not a “bubble;” it is a glorious fact, – one through which the general level of humanity is raised and the whole world impelled forward.

I do not say that all persons who conscientiously use to their utmost ability the one or two talents they possess are not as happy as they can be. Thank God! life can be full in small measures. But if any man or woman has been given five or ten talents, I do say they have no right to keep them for their own delectation, falling back upon such cheap sentiments as the hollowness of fame and the “bubble reputation.” Fame is not a bubble; it is a power whose beneficent achievements have done a great deal toward making this world a comfortable dwelling-place.

A great many high-sounding maxims in use at the present day have lost their application. There was a time, centuries ago, when the humiliations attending any upward climb were sufficient to deter a sensitive, honorable soul. But such days are forever past. Any one now bearing precious gifts for humanity finds the gates lifted up and a wide entrance ready for him. Men and women can make what mark they are able to make, and the world stands watching with sympathetic heart. They will not find its “reputation” a “bubble.”

Another fine, windy theme of warning from “sour-grape” philosophers is the hollowness of friendship and the general insincerity of the world. They have “seen through” the world, they know all its falseness and worthlessness; and, as the world is far too busy to dispute their assertions or to defend itself, the superior discernment of this class of people is not brought to accurate accounting. As a matter of fact, however, people generally get just as much consideration from the world, and just as much fidelity from their friends, as they deserve. A friend may ask us to dinner, but not therefore should we expect that he share his purse with us. Community of taste and sentiment does not imply community of goods. But, for all this, friendship is not hollow, nor are the grapes of its hospitality sour.

I may notice here the prevalent opinion that there is no such friendship now in the world as there used to be. “There are no Davids and Jonathans now,” say the unbelievers in humanity. Very true, for David and Jonathan did not belong to the nineteenth century. To keep up such a friendship, we require, not a spare hour now and then, but an amount of certain and continuous leisure. There are still great friendships among boys at school and young men in college, for they have a large amount of steady leisure; and this is necessary to signal friendship. When we have more time, we shall have more and stronger friendships.

The vanity of life, the deceitfulness of women, the falseness of love, the impossibility of happiness, the passing away of all that is lovely and of good report, are old, old, old texts of complaint. Men and women talk about them until they feel ever so much better than the rest of the world; and such talk enables them to look down with proper contempt upon the hypocrisies of society, – that is, of their next-door neighbors and near acquaintances, – and fosters a comfortable, but dangerous self-esteem. The world, upon the whole, is a good world to those who try to be good and to do good, and every year it is growing better. During the last fifty years how much it has grown! How sympathetic, how charitable, how evangelizing it has become! Yes, indeed, if we choose to do so, we shall meet with far more good hearts than bad ones, and the topmost grapes are not sour.

Burdens

There are two kinds of burdens – those that God lays on us, and those which we lay on ourselves. When God lays the burden on the back, he gives us strength to carry it. There never was a Christian who, in his weariest and dreariest hours, could not say, “His grace is sufficient.” If God smiles on him, he can smile under any burden that he may have to carry. He can go up the “hill of difficulty” singing, and walk confidently into the very land of the shadow of death. For God’s burdens are easy to bear; because he walks with us, and when the journey is too great, and the burden too heavy, and our hearts begin to fail and faint, he is sure to whisper, “Cast thy burden upon me, and I will sustain thee.”

The burdens that are hard to bear are those we lay upon ourselves. What a burden to themselves, and to every one around them, are the lazy and the unemployed! If it is a man, prayers should be offered up for his family and his dependents, – for who is so morbid and melancholy, so pettish and fretful, so devoured by spleen and ennui, as the man with nothing to do? There is a lion in every way to him. He is out of God’s order of creation; the busy world has no sympathy with him; society has no use for him; no one is the better for his life, and no one is sorry for his death. He is simply the fungus of living, active, breathing humanity. The lazy lay a burden on their backs which would appall men who have fought winds and waves, and searched the bowels of the earth, and bound to their will the subtle forces of electricity and steam.

The burdens we bind for ourselves we shall have to bear alone. God is not going to help us, and angels stand afar off; good men and women are not here bound by the injunction, “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” The envious, the proud, the drunkard, the seducer, the complainer, the lazy, etc., must bear their self-inflicted burdens, till they perish with them.

If the kingdom of heaven could be taken by some wonderful coup d’état, many would be first that are now last. But of great deeds little account is to be made. They are indigenous in every condition of society. It is a great life that is never a failure. A great life composed of a multitude of little burdens, cheerfully borne, and little charges faithfully kept. And this is a kind of Christian warfare, that is specially to be carried on in the sphere of the home. Many a professor, faithful in all the weightier matters of the law and the sanctuary, and blameless in the eyes of the world, is a rock of offence in his own household. His wife doubts his religion, his children fear him, and his servants call him a hard master. He pays all his tithes of mint, anise, and cummin to the church and society, but as regards the little burdens of his own household, he is worse than a publican.

Small burdens make up the moral and religious probation of a majority of women, for they have but rare occasion for the exercise of such faith and fortitude as commands the eye of the world. But these burdens, though apparently small and contracted in their sphere, are not only very important in their results, but often singularly irritating. Sickly, fretful children – impertinent, lazy servants – a thoughtless, irregular husband – a hundred other burdens so small she does not like to say how heavy she feels them to be and how sorely they weary her, – these are “her warfare;” and because the Master has laid them upon her, shall she not bear them? The world may call them “little burdens,” but there is nothing small in the eyes of Infinity.

In no way can a woman cultivate beauty and strength of character so well as in the patient bearing and carrying of the small burdens that every day await her – the headaches and toothaches – the weariness and weakness incident to her position and condition. For it is the glory of a woman that her weakness or weariness never shrouds a household in gloom, or makes the atmosphere electrical with impatience and irritability. To carry her burden, whatever it may be, cheerfully, is not a little victory, and such daily victories make the last great one easy to be won. It is hard to die before we have learned to live; but death is easy to those who have conquered life. To such the grave is but a laying down of all burdens, a rest from labor and obligation, while yet their works of love and unselfishness do follow them with fruit and blessing.

We must not forget that in our journey through life, there are burdens which we may lawfully make our own. We may help the weak and the struggling on to their feet, when they have fallen in the battle of life. We may comfort those “touched by the finger of God.” We may copy the Good Samaritan, not forgetting the oil and two pence. We may wipe the tears from the eyes of the widow and the fatherless. In bearing such burdens as these, we shall find ourselves in good company; for in the tabernacles of sanctified suffering we may come near to the Divine Burden Bearer; and going on messages of mercy, we may meet angels going the same way.