Chautauqua Institution

“ If it be true that the gospels sweep a larger circle and involve a greater work than was ever attempted by a human brain, if it be true that you can put a million of Shaksperes into their compass and still have an abyss of art unfilled, then you have an inference, an argument, in the line of the evidences of Christianity that has never been attempted. And that is that the best told, most dramatically told story, the story of the visit of God’s son to the earth, of his life, death, resurrection and ascension, must have been told by God himself. ”

“ Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and that, when he looked toward it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society—conceive of this as being the general character of the scene upon one side of his contemplation ”

“ Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight to us in this whole city has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem or an article on some literary subject to sell—sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that ‘he was ill,’ whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing—and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that would convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. ”

“ It is thus that the boy ceases, at length, to be the slave of his appetite, but it is because a manlier taste has now brought it into subordination, and that the youth ceases to idolize pleasure, but it is because the idol of wealth has become the stronger, and gotten the ascendency—and that even the love of money ceases to have the mastery over the heart of many a thriving citizen, but it is because drawn into the whirl of city politics, another affection has been wrought into his moral system, and he is now lorded over by the love of power. ”

“ Here lies one of the uses of the dramatic power of the gospel. When a man of humble attainments has it to tell, he has only to follow the book to make it an interesting story. The moment he strikes a real point of interest, the attentive soul feels that that is what it came for, and, what is better, that it is said to him. In short, the enduring power of this story lies in great part in this fact. The consistency between the beginning and the end and the logical order of things, comes out in a thousand powerful ways. ”

“ Let man’s environments, duties and responsibilities be what they may, if his mind and heart are in harmony and sympathy with them, he is satisfied, and at rest.
If Chautauqua is stirring and rosy and beautiful in summer to all people, to a nature that can appreciate it it is gorgeous, savage, grand and thoughtful in winter. At the one season we float carelessly along in the midst of scenes of sunshine, loveliness and gaiety; at the other we are more, alone with God, we commune with the stars, and become familiar with the sterner aspects of life. ”

“ Human reality is combined with heavenly, and you are continually going to and fro between the earth and the sky. The natural and the supernatural are so run together that you feel no shock in passing from one to the other. You have men and angels, divine power and human power, associated together. The warp of earth is woven into the woof of heaven until it is one piece of cloth of gold. The gold of the skies is braided into the earthly so perfectly I defy any man to take them apart with consistency or success. ”

“ When nature had savagely arrayed itself in frost and snow and cloud and tempest, hiding the earth and filling the heavens, had the sun put in an appearance what a ghastly display would it have made! But in the midst of this desolation the snow-birds appeared, and they were beautiful, for they were the flowers of the season. We realized that the power of harmony could be heard in a tempest as well as in a seraph’s song. It is the extreme of folly to waste a winter watching for the coming of spring. ”

“ A spirit of political and religious infidelity pervaded the middle and lower classes. The throne had too long been degraded by excess, and tarnished by scandal, to command the affection of the multitude. The nobles were scorned rather than reverenced, and not even the ancient stronghold of terror remained. The clergy, by their cruelties, their ignorance, and their debaucheries had alienated the great body of the people, and brought down upon themselves the satire and indignation of the enlightened. ”

“ For though you might not be able to break or bend the power of genius—the deeper the sea, the more precipitous the coast—yet in the most important initiatory decade of life, in the first, at the opening dawn of all feelings, you might surround and overlay the slumbering lion-energies with all the tender habits of a gentle heart, and all the bands of love.—Richter. ”

“ The else unoccupied female, who spends the hours of every evening at some play of hazard, knows as well as you, that the pecuniary gain, or the honorable triumph of a successful contest, are altogether paltry. It is not such a demonstration of vanity as this that will force her away from her dear and delightful occupation. The habit can not so be displaced as to leave nothing but a negative and cheerless vacancy behind it—though it may be so supplanted as to be followed up by another habit of employment to which the power of some new affection has constrained her. ”

“ Do you wish to take this thought fresh from the fountain? Come to the temple, where the disciples, accustomed to nothing great in art, fresh from Galilee, stand gazing in admiration at the glory of the great edifice and one of them cries out: “Master, behold these stones; and what manner of a building is this?” And listen to the Master as he says: “There shall not remain one stone upon another,” and you have the fountain head of all these streams running down into our poetry.
Mark the wonderful consistency, and the wonderful movement of this story—consider it as a drama. ”

“ He may not be able, with the eye of shrewd and satirical observation, to expose to the ready recognition of his hearers the desires of worldliness—but with the tidings of the gospel in commission, he may wield the only engine that can extirpate them. He can not do what some might have done, when, as if by the hand of a magician they have brought out to view, from the hidden recesses of our nature, the foibles and lurking appetites which belong to it. ”

“ Beside the world, it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world, and with this peculiarity, which is all its own—that in the gospel do we so behold God, as that we may love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners—and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed Mediator. ”

“ Originality, nature, humor, imagination, freedom, the disposition to talk, the play of mood, the touch of confidence—these qualities, of which the letters are full, will with the aid of an inimitable use of language—a style which glances at nothing that it does not render grotesque—preserve their life for readers even further removed from the occasion than ourselves, and for whom possibly the vogue of Carlyle’s published writings in his day will be to a certain degree a subject of wonder. ”

“ The brotherhood of man includes those of lowest estate. So thought the founder of the great state that bears his name. With his charter in hand he fearlessly plunged into the vast wilderness, saying, “I will here found a free colony for all mankind.” The words had the true ring, and the asylum was opened for men of every nation who loved liberty and hated the oppressor’s wrongs. And it was a most fitting thing that the “bells of his capital should ring out the first glad notes of American independence.” ”

“ If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near, and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society?—and shrinking away from the desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world, and to take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it? ”

“ It is willingly suspended, for example, on any single evening, should the time that was wont to be allotted to gaming require to be spent on the preparation of an approaching assembly.
The ascendant power of a second affection will do what no exposition, however forcible, of the folly and worthlessness of the first, ever could effectuate. And it is the same in the great world. You never will be able to arrest any of its leading pursuits, by a naked demonstration of their vanity. It is quite in vain to think of stopping one of these pursuits in any way else, but by stimulating to another. ”

“ Of course the family is gone as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up a family round a “register.” But you might just as well try to bring it up by hand as without the rallying-point of a hearth-stone. Are there any homesteads now-a-days? Do people hesitate to change houses any more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses as they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means. Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit them. ”

“ He seems to feel that the one only who has acquired a facile style can expect to produce a given quantity in a given time. “His language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of the great performer’s fingers; as words come from the mouth of the indignant orator; as letters fly from the fingers of the trained compositor; as the syllables tinkled out by little bells form themselves to the ear of the telegrapher.” ”

“ We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in our heart the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God, than building ourselves up on our most holy faith. That denial of the world which is not possible to him that dissents from the gospel testimony, is possible, even as all things are possible to him that believeth. ”

“ Along with the light of a free gospel, does there enter the love of the gospel, which in proportion as you impair the freeness, you are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness. ”

“ When told to look not at the things that are seen and temporal, this were blotting out the light of all that is visible from the prospect of him in whose eye there is a wall of partition between guilty nature and the joys of eternity—but he who believes that Christ has broken down this wall, finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as he looks onward in faith to the things that are unseen and eternal. ”

“ And let the existing tendencies of the heart be what they may to the scene that is near and visible around us, still, if another stood revealed to the prospect of man, either through the channel of faith, or through the channel of his senses—then, without violence done to the constitution of his moral nature, may he die unto the present world, and live to the lovelier world that stands in the distance, away from it. ”

“ Salvation by grace—salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness.
Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the gospel, and you raise a topic of distrust between man and God. You take away from the power of the gospel to melt and to conciliate. ”

“ The arithmetic of your short-lived days, may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding, and from his fancied bed of death may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness, and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized by his argument, feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from a scene of so much vanity. ”

“ Why are we interested in this old history lying back there in a world that had almost nothing like our world except men, and the eternal rocks, and the ever flowing streams? Why, belting the green earth, should we find men everywhere singing about this passage in human history? What is the charm of it that reaches human nature so widely? Undoubtedly there is much charm in the delightful truth which it contains ”

“ Thus gifted with a mental touch equally for the substance of language and the substance of thought which language struggles to give birth to; possessed of the power of an eager and a nipping sarcasm and an infernal courage, fortified with extensive reading and a retentive memory, Poe became a scourge to mediocrity, imitation, sham and pretense. There could not have been a more critical time for such a man to attempt a livelihood at letters ”

“ Let us insist on His claims to your affection, and whether in the shape of gratitude or in the shape of esteem, let us never cease to affirm that in the whole of that wondrous economy, the purpose of which is to reclaim a sinful world unto Himself, He, the God of love, so sets Himself forth in characters of endearment, that naught but faith, and naught but understanding are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of your hearts back again. ”

“ At night I have seen these men in great numbers around their camp fires, wild and boisterous, under the influence of liquor, like so many Comanche savages just home from the war path, with many scalps hanging at their belts. On many of these drives the men would be engaged for weeks, with rum as the most important part of their ration. On the return of these men to civilized life a large part of them would spend in a week, in a drunken carouse, all the wages paid them for their winter’s work, without regard to wife and children at home. ”