Chautauqua Institution

“ Religion in the soul will make all the work and toil of life—its gains and losses, friendships, rivalries, competitions, its manifold incidents and events—the means of religious advancement. Marble or coarse clay, it matters not much which of these the artist works, the touch of genius transforms the coarser material into beauty, and lends to the finer a value it never had before. Lofty or lowly, rude or refined as life’s work to us may be, it will become to a holy mind only the material for an infinitely nobler than all the creations of genius—the image of God in the soul. ”

“ There are undercurrents in the ocean which act independently of the movements of the waters on the surface; far down too in its hidden depths there is a region where, even though the storm be raging on the upper waves, perpetual calmness and stillness reign. So there may be an undercurrent beneath the surface movements of your life—there may dwell in the secret depths of your being the abiding peace of God, the repose of a holy mind, even though, all the while, the restless stir and commotion of worldly business may mark your outer history. ”

“ Swifter than by the subtle electric agent is thought borne from earth to heaven. The Great Spirit on high is in constant sympathy with the spirit beneath, and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the thrill of aspiration flashes from the heart of man to God. Whenever anything vexes you—whenever, from the rude and selfish ways of men, any trials of temper cross your path; when your spirits are ruffled, or your Christian forbearance put to the test, be this your instant resource! ”

“ Then the Chinese lanterns will be lighted, cottages illuminated, a peal of bells will ring, cannon be fired, flags will wave, vespers (the old songs) will be sung, orators of other years on this sod and new ones from many States and Canada will speak. The lake will glow with beauty, as the steamers illuminated with many colored lights come and go with their crowds of people, and the fireworks glare on the shore, and shooting into the air redden the dome of the sky and reflect the glory of their colors in the waters below. At Chautauqua every day is a great day.
The cost of living is not high. ”

“ The smile that is to welcome him, as he crosses his lowly threshold when the work of the day is over, the glad faces, and merry voices, and sweet caresses of little ones, as they shall gather round him in the quiet evening hours—the thought of all this may dwell, a latent joy, a hidden motive, deep down in his heart of hearts, come rushing in a sweet solace at every pause of exertion, and act like a secret oil to smooth the wheels of labor. ”

“ A lifetime of solitude, hardship, penury, were all too slight a price to pay, if need be, for an eternity of bliss: and the results of our most incessant toil and application to the world’s business, could they secure for us the highest prizes of earthly ambition, would be purchased at a tremendous cost, if they stole away from us the only time in which we could prepare to meet our God—if they left us at last rich, gay, honored, possessed of every thing the world holds dear, but to face an eternity undone. ”

“ No religion can be genuine, no goodness can be constant or lasting, that springs not, as its primary source, from faith in Jesus Christ. To know Christ as my Savior—to come with all my guilt and weakness to him in whom trembling penitence never fails to find a friend—to cast myself at his feet in whom all that is sublime in divine holiness is softened, though not obscured, by all that is beautiful in human tenderness ”

“ The body is carried on a rude bier constructed like a ladder, and borne on the shoulders of men who shuffle and jostle along in no very reverent manner. The bearers carry the corpse into the Ganges and leave it there, that the sacred waters may flow over it before cremation. In the early morning we saw these three phases of a Hindu funeral and, sailing on, still another yet more shocking sight was revealed to us, for we caught a glimpse, just under the surface of the water, of a naked, swollen, floating human body, and above it the vultures were hovering. ”

“ In conclusion, let me once more urge upon you the great lesson upon which we have been insisting. Carry religious principle into every-day life. Principle elevates whatever it touches. Facts lose all their littleness to the mind which brings principle and law to bear upon them. The chemist’s or geologist’s soiled hands are no sign of base work; the coarsest operations of the laboratory, the breaking of stones with a hammer, cease to be mechanical when intellectual thought and principle govern the mind and guide the hands. ”

“ Its light shines best and fullest, not on a life undisturbed by business, but on a soul unstained by sin. The religion of Christ, while it affords scope for the loftiest intellect in the contemplation and development of its glorious truths, is yet, in the exquisite simplicity of its essential facts and principles, patent to the simplest mind. Rude, untutored, toil-worn you may be, but if you have wit enough to guide you in the commonest round of daily toil, you have wit enough to learn to be saved. ”

“ Now one thing is certain, that there is in the moral world a law of labor. Secular work, in all cases a duty, is, in most cases, a necessity. God might have made us independent of work. He might have nourished us like “the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field,” which “toil not, neither do they spin.” He might have rained down our daily food, like the manna of old, from heaven, or caused nature to yield it in unsolicited profusion to all, and so set us free to a life of devotion. ”

“ Would Ireland know the solution of her vexed question? Then let history repeat itself; and instead of the torch of the incendiary, or the knife of the assassin, let the Irish tenantry take in their hands, as did their ancestors thirteen hundred years ago, the Bible of the blessed Savior, and convert again the English land-owners to the doctrines of him who taught, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ They have tried sullen submission, careless indifference, crafty counsels, and armed rebellion, none of which have been successful. ”

“ But again, if you would lead a Christian life in the world, let me remind you that that life must be continued as well as begun with Christ. You must learn to look to him not merely as your Savior from guilt, but as the friend of your secret life, the chosen companion of your solitary hours, the depository of all the deeper thoughts and feelings of your soul. You can not live for him in the world unless you live much with him apart from the world. In spiritual as in secular things, the deepest and strongest characters need much solitude to form them. ”

“ But to be religious in the world—to be pious, and holy, and earnest-minded in the counting-room, the manufactory, the market-place, the field, the farm—to carry out our good and solemn thoughts and feelings into the throng and thoroughfare of daily life—this is the great difficulty of our Christian calling. No man not lost to all moral influence can help feeling his worldly passions calmed, and some measure of seriousness stealing over his mind, when engaged in the performance of the more awful and sacred rites of religion ”

“ And the pictures of natural scenery, simple or mingled with art, in life or in ruins, in the various landscapes drawn from different parts of the earth and presented to the eye of the mind as in thought, we stand in the midst of them as they arise, admiring them in their own grandeur and loveliness, or finding in them a fit place for reflection and prayerful meditation, are well worth beholding, recalling, and gazing upon with quickened and cultured powers and imagination, extracting, combining and storing. ”

“ There are many men who listen incredulously to the high-toned exhortations of the pulpit; the religious life there depicted is much too seraphic, they think, for this plain and prosaic world of ours. Show these men that the picture is not a fancy one. Make it a reality. Bring religion down from the clouds. Apply to it the infallible test of experiment, and, by diffusing your daily actions with holy principles, prove that love to God, superiority to worldly pleasure, spirituality, holiness, heavenly-mindedness, are something more than the stock ideas of sermons. ”

“ Agassiz under the flagstaff on the summit of the island, overlooking the western sea, to watch the glories of the dying day, whiling away the hour with song and familiar converse—all these memories and many more crowd upon us for notice, but we forbear.
Alas! that the golden hopes raised by such brilliant beginning should so soon be blasted. Agassiz died during the succeeding December. No man was ever more generally, more tenderly, or more profoundly mourned. By none was his loss felt with more poignant grief than by those who were with him at Penikese. ”

“ Nay rather, believe me, that is the proper scene, the peculiar and appropriate field for religion—the place in which to prove that piety is not a dream of Sundays and solitary hours; that it can bear the light of day; that it can wear well amid the rough jostlings, the hard struggles, the coarse contacts of common life—the place, in one word, to prove how possible it is for a man to be at once not “slothful in business,” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” ”

“ Symmetry, purity, and perfection, such as are rarely seen in man’s work in all this round world were before us. Directly above the gilt crescent of the dome hung the full moon, over whose face light clouds were passing. As we watched the sky and the movement of the clouds, the dome itself seemed to float like an airy bubble.
In greatest contrast to this magnificent mausoleum is the simple sodded grave of that faithful daughter of Shah Jehan, who shared her father’s captivity, and who desired this inscription to be placed on her stone: “Let no rich canopy cover my grave. ”

“ As there are laws and powers in the natural world, of which, without thinking of them, we are ever availing ourselves—as I do not think of gravitation when, by its aid, I lift my arm, or of atmospheric laws when, by means of them, I breathe, so in the routine of daily work, though comparatively seldom do I think of them, I may yet be constantly swayed by the motives, sustained by the principles, living, breathing, acting in the invisible atmosphere of true religion. ”

“ The practice of one secular art excludes for the time the practice of other secular arts. But not so with the art of religion. This is the universal art, the common, all-embracing profession. It belongs to no one set of functionaries, to no special class of men. Statesman, soldier, lawyer, physician, poet, painter, tradesman, farmer—men of every craft and calling in life—may, while in the actual discharge of the duties of their varied avocations, be yet, at the same moment, discharging the duties of a higher and nobler vocation—practicing the art of a Christian. ”

“ In the little tea-leaf, as it grows on its sunshiny hillsides, the most subtle and cunning powers are set to work by the wisdom which knows everything, and by the hand which holds and directs all things in man’s wonderful world. The result is, that out of coarse earth, and thin vapors, and fostering sunshine, the ingredients of the white powder are gathered together, and mixed, each in its proper proportions, and in the right manner, in the hidden recesses of the growing plant. ”

“ It is a knowledge that is acquired by a life of devotion to what is true and beautiful; by the hourly and daily comparing of what we see in nature and the thinking of how it should be represented in art. It is the habit of constant observation of great things and small, and the experience that springs from it. It is the skill to combine and the skill to separate—to compound and to simplify—to fuse detail into mass—to subordinate definition to space, distance, light, and air. ”

“ I am glad to know your circle is making progress. The serious study of events in the history of mankind, taken in their course and connection, in parts of the world best known at various seasons, or synoptically in successive periods of the past, the course of every series traced to its present, the panorama surveyed and examined, must be an exercise exceedingly fruitful in the most instructive and delightful contemplations, interesting and solemnizing to the moral sense, yea, to the Christian heart. ”

“ The world’s scenes of business may fade on our sight, the noise of its restless pursuits may fall no more upon our ear, when we pass to meet our God; but not one unselfish thought, not one kind and gentle word, not one act of self-sacrificing love done for Jesus’ sake, in the midst of our common work, but will have left an indelible impress on the soul, which will go out with it to its eternal destiny. ”

“ The freshness of the early morning is succeeded by dry heat as the sun rises higher and higher with torrid beams. We see the natives quench their thirst with the milk of green cocoanuts, but we dare not indulge in its use. The pampas grass waves and glistens in the sunlight; enormous ant-hills are seen surrounding dead stumps or standing unsupported on level plains; green parrots and gorgeous butterflies chase each other unmindful of the heat, and toward noon we see the famous rock and huge gopuras of Trichinopoly across the rice fields. ”

“ The laborer’s evening release from toil—the schoolboy’s coming holiday, or the hard-wrought business-man’s approaching season of relaxation—the expected return of a long-absent and much loved friend—is not the thought of these, or similar joyous events, one which often intermingles with, without interrupting, our common work? When a father goes forth to his “labor till the evening,” perhaps often, very often, in the thick of his toils, the thought of home may start up to cheer him. ”

“ SENTENCES FROM CONFUCIUS.
Grieve not that men know you not, but grieve that you are ignorant of men.
Have no friends unlike yourself.
Learning, without reflection, will profit nothing; reflection, without learning, will leave the mind uneasy and miserable.
Knowledge produces pleasure clear as water; complete virtue brings happiness, solid as a mountain; knowledge pervades all things; virtue is tranquil and happy; knowledge is delight; virtue is long life. ”