 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XXXII
Every year of my life I grow more and more convinced
that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful
and good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and
the false. Society has done my spirit grievous wrong, for
the last few weeks, with its legal bull-baitings, and its hired
murderers. They have made me ashamed of belonging to
the human species; and were it not that I struggled hard
against it, and prayed earnestly for a spirit of forgiveness,
they would have made me hate my race. Yet feeling thus,
I did wrong to them. Most of them had merely caught the
contagion of murder, and really were not aware of the nature
of the fiend they harboured. Probably there was not
that would not have been softened, could it have entered
into confidential intercourse with the prisoner, as Dr. Anthon
did. All would then have learned that he was a human
being, with a heart to be melted, and a conscience to
be roused, like the rest of us; that under the turbid and surging
tide of proud, exasperated feelings, ran a warm current of
human affections, which, with more genial influences, might
have flowed on deeper and stronger, mingling its waters
with the river of life. All this each one would have known,
could he have looked into the heart of the poor criminal as
God looketh. But his whole life was judged by a desperate
act, done in the insanity of passion; and the motives and
the circumstances were revealed to the public only through
the cold barbarisms of the law, and the fierce exaggerations
of an excited populace; therefore he seemed like a wild
beast, walled out from human sympathies,—not as a fellow-creature,
with like passions and feelings as themselves.
Carlyle, in his French Revolution, speaking of one of
the three bloodiest judges of the Reign of Terror, says:
“Marat too, had a brother, and natural affections; and was
wrapt once in swaddling-clothes, and slept safe in a cradle,
like the rest of us.” We are too apt to forget these gentle
considerations when talking of public criminals.
If we looked into our souls with a more wise humility,
we should discover in our own ungoverned anger the germ
of murder; and meekly thank God that we, too, had not
been brought into temptations too fiery for our strength. It
is sad to think how the records of a few evil days may blot
out from the memory of our fellow-men whole years of
generous thoughts and deeds of kindness; and this, too,
when each one has before him the volume of his own broken
resolutions, and oft-repeated sins. The temptation which
most easily besets you, needed, perhaps, to be only a little
stronger; you needed only to be surrounded by circumstances
who now walk abroad in the sunshine of respectability,
might have come under the ban of human laws, as you
have into frequent disobedience of the divine; and then
that one foul blot would have been regarded as the hieroglyphic
symbol of your whole life. Between you and the
inmate of the penitentiary, society sees a difference so
great, that you are scarcely recognized as belonging to
the same species; but there is One who judgeth not as
man judgeth.
When Mrs. Fry spoke at Newgate, she was wont to address
both prisoners and visiters as sinners. When Dr.
Channing alluded to this practice, she meekly replied, “In
the sight of God, there is not, perhaps, so much difference
as men think.” In the midst of recklessness, revenge and
despair, there is often a glimmering evidence that the divine
spark is not quite extinguished. Who can tell into
what a holy flame of benevolence and self-sacrifice it might
have been kindled, had the man been surrounded from his
cradle by an atmosphere of love?
Surely these considerations should make us judge mercifully
of the sinner, while we hate the sin with tenfold intensity,
because it is an enemy that lies in wait for us all.
The highest and holiest example teaches us to forgive all
crimes, while we palliate none.
Would that we could learn to be kind—always and everywhere
kind! Every jealous thought I cherish, every
angry word I utter, every repulsive tone, is helping to build
penitentiaries and prisons, and to fill them with those who
merely carry the same passions and feelings farther than I
do. It is an awful thought; and the more it is impressed
upon me, the more earnestly do I pray to live in a state of
perpetual benediction.
And rescue universal man from the hunting hell-hounds of his doings.”
And so I return, as the old preachers used to say, to my
first proposition; that we should think gently of all, and
claim kindred with all, and include all, without exception,
in the circle of our kindly sympathies. I would not thrust
out even the hangman, though methinks if I were dying of
thirst, I would rather wait to receive water from another
hand than his. Yet what is the hangman but a servant of
the law? And what is the law but an expression of public
opinion? And if public opinion be brutal, and thou a component
part thereof, art thou not the hangman's accomplice?
In the name of our common Father, sing thy part of the
great chorus in the truest time, and thus bring this crashing
discord into harmony!
And if at times, the discord proves too strong for thee,
go out into the great temple of Nature, and drink in freshness
from her never-failing fountain. The devices of men
pass away as a vapour; but she changes never. Above all
fluctuations of opinion, and all the tumult of the passions,
she smiles ever, in various but unchanging beauty. I have
gone to her with tears in my eyes, with a heart full of the
saddest forebodings, for myself and all the human race; and
lo, she has shown me a babe plucking a white clover, with
busy, uncertain little fingers, and the child walked straight
into my heart, and prophesied as hopefully as an angel;
and I believed her, and went on my way rejoicing. The
language of nature, like that of music, is universal; it speaks
to the heart, and is understood by all. Dialects belong to
clans and sects; tones to the universe. High above all
language, floats music on its amber cloud. It is not the
exponent of opinion, but of feeling. The heart made it;
therefore it is infinite. It reveals more than language can
ever utter, or thoughts conceive. And high as music is
above mere dialects—winging its godlike way, while verbs
and nouns go creeping—even so, sounds the voice of Love,
and the ear of Jehovah.
In sincere humility do I acknowledge that if I am less
guilty than some of my human brothers, it is mainly because
I have been beloved. Kind emotions and impulses
have not been sent back to me, like dreary echoes, through
empty rooms. All around me, at this moment, are tokens
of a friendly heart-warmth. A sheaf of dried grasses brings
near the gentle image of one who gathered them for love;
a varied group of the graceful lady-fern tells me of summer
rambles in the woods, by one who mingled thoughts
of me with all her glimpses of nature's beauty. A rose-bush,
from a poor Irish woman, speaks to me of her blessings.
A bird of paradise, sent by friendship, to warm the
wintry hours with thoughts of sunny Eastern climes, cheers
me with its floating beauty, like a fairy fancy. Flower-tokens
from the best of neighbours, have come all summer
long, to bid me a blithe good morning, and tell me news of
sunshine and fresh air. A piece of sponge, graceful as if
it grew on the arms of the wave, reminds me of Grecian
seas, and of Hylas borne away by water-nymphs. It was
given me for its uncommon beauty; and who will not try
harder to be good, for being deemed a fit recipient of the
beautiful? A root, which promises to bloom into fragrance,
is sent by an old Quaker lady, whom I know not, but who
says, “I would fain minister to thy love of flowers.” Affection
sends childhood to peep lovingly at me from engravings,
or stand in classic grace, embodied in the little plaster cast.
The far-off and the near, the past and the future, are with
me in my humble apartment. True, the mementoes cost
little of the world's wealth; for they are of the simplest
kind; but they express the universe—because they are
thoughts of love, clothed in forms of beauty.
Why do I mention these things? From vanity? Nay,
verily; for it often humbles me to tears, to think how much
to God, pass on their thorny path, comparatively uncheered
by love and blessing. But it came into my heart to tell
you how much these things helped me to be good; how
they were like roses dropped by unseen hands, guiding me
through a wilderness-path unto our Father's mansion. And
the love that helps me to be good, I would have you
bestow upon all, that all may become good. To love others
is greater happiness than to be beloved by them; to do
good is more blessed than to receive. The heart of Jesus
was so full of love, that he called little children to his arms,
and folded John upon his bosom; and this love made him
capable of such divine self-renunciation, that he could offer
up even his life for the good of the world. The desire to
be beloved is ever restless and unsatisfied; but the love
that flows out upon others is a perpetual well-spring from
on high. This source of happiness is within the reach of
all; here. if not elsewhere, may the stranger and the friendless
satisfy the infinite yearnings of the human heart, and
find therein refreshment and joy.
Believe me, the great panacea for all the disorders in the
universe, is Love. For thousands of years the world has
gone on perversely, trying to overcome evil with evil; with
the worst results, as the condition of things plainly testifies.
Nearly two thousand years ago, the prophet of the Highest
proclaimed that evil could be overcome only with good.
But “when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on
the earth?” If we have faith in this holy principle, where
is it written on our laws or our customs?
Write it on thine own life; and men reading it shall say,
lo, something greater than vengeance is here; a power
mightier than coercion. And thus the individual faith shall
become a social faith; and to the mountains of crime around
us, it will say, “Be thou removed, and cast into the depths
knew them shall know them no more.
This hope is coming toward us, with a halo of sunshine
round its head; in the light it casts before, let us do works
of zeal with the spirit of love. Man may be redeemed from
his thraldom! He will be redeemed. For the mouth of
the Most High hath spoken it. It is inscribed in written
prophecy, and He utters it to our hearts in perpetual revelation.
To you, and me, and each of us, He says, “Go,
bring my people out of Egypt, into the promised land.”
To perform this mission, we must love both the evil and
the good, and shower blessings on the just as well as the
unjust. Thanks to our Heavenly Father, I have had much
friendly aid on my own spiritual pilgrimage; through many
a cloud has pierced a sunbeam, and over many a pitfall
have I been guided by a garland. In gratitude for this, fain
would I help others to be good, according to the small
measure of my ability. My spiritual adventures are like
those of the “little boy that run away from Providence.”
When troubled or discouraged, my soul seats itself on some
door-step—there is ever some one to welcome me in, and
make “a nice little bed” for my weary heart. It may be
a young friend, who gathers for me flowers in Summer, and
grasses, ferns, and red berries in the Autumn; or it may be
sweet Mary Howitt, whose mission it is “to turn the sunny
side of things to human eyes;” or Charles Dickens, who
looks with such deep and friendly glance into the human
heart, whether it beats beneath embroidered vest, or tattered
jacket; or the serene and gentle Fenelon; or the devout
Thomas à Kempis; or the meek-spirited John Woolman;
or the eloquent hopefulness of Channing; or the cathedral
tones of Keble, or the saintly beauty of Raphael, or the
clear melody of Handel. All speak to me with friendly
greeting, and have somewhat to give my thirsty soul. Fain
would I do the same, for all who come to my door-step,
and the guilty, above all others, the door of my heart shall
never open outward. I have too much need of mercy. Are
we not all children of the same Father? and shall we not
pity those who among pit-falls lose their way home?
| Letters from New York | |