Henry W. Bellows

“ The great truth of the absoluteness of law cannot be taught in a single lesson. No man can tell it to another. It must be demonstrated to be believed. It must be shown in its myriad and unvarying applications to all forms of being before it can be felt as a reality. One must see for one's self the grand march of the order of the universe, the unfailing sequence of cause and effect, the mathematical exactness of the correlation of all the forces of the world, before one can have a sense of the truth which lies at the basis and forms the culmination of scientific thought to-day. ”

“ That is the irrepealable law of growth. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you." Worship, faith, duty, devotion to God, Christ, humanity, to justice, freedom, truth,—these, and not self-culture, have lifted the race and the world. Learn, acquire, cultivate, improve, develop yourselves, by art, music, reading, languages, study, science, experience, but do it all in seeking to know and love and serve God and man. ”

“ Another may stretch out the hand to defend me from a fatal blow; another may endow me with wealth; another may give me the praise I do not deserve; but no friendly intervention, no deed of gift, no flattery, no falsity, can give me inward truth and integrity. That solemn point in human experience, that question upon which every thing hangs—shall I do right?—or shall I do wrong?—is shrouded in the secrecy and silence of my own mind. All the power in the world, cannot do for me the thing that I must do for myself. ”

“ When does culture or art in him attain to the highest? It is when going beyond all thoughts of culture and art, he flings himself, in perfect sympathy and free communion, into the great mass of human interests. It is so that the greatest things have been achieved in all the higher fields of human effort—in writing, in eloquence, in painting and sculpture and music; and it is so, especially, that the doers of great things, have become the noblest men. "Art for art's sake," has been the motto for culture, with some. ”

“ And is not a pure mind the very moral atmosphere in which man sees God as he is, and rejoices in the sight? A man's moral sentiments are the medium through which comes to him the thought of God. Let those sentiments be perverted, and he imagines either that God is not or that he is different from what he is. His wrong mind either obstructs entirely the beam which darts from the Divine essence, or scatters the spotless white of that Sun, the pure aggregate of Divine perfections, into the particolored tints of the earthly and sensual soul itself. ”

“ There are great men in the world, whose lives are of far more importance than mine—statesmen, commanders, kings—but I—no being can feel an intenser interest in his individuality than I do in mine; no being can be of more importance to himself than I am to myself; the very poles of thought and being turn upon that slender line; that simple unity, like the unit in figures, swells to infinite multiplication; that one letter, that single stroke of pen or type, may be varied and complicated, till it writes the history of the world. ”

“ We make the highest virtue something exceptional, instead of regarding it as a prize for us all. We imagine that some few have attained it; that Jesus did, and that a few persons, denominated saints, have approached him; but that for the common run of men, this is all out of the question. The fact is, that Christianity is regarded by many, as an enigma, a secret of the initiated, as an idle vision or hard exaction—not as a rational culture. Listen to the conversation of the mart or the drawing-room, you will find that the high Christian law is but a mocking dream in their eyes. ”

“ All lives are entwined together. We see limits which freedom cannot pass. We understand something of the limits of each individual. We understand something of the laws of descent and of the power of education. Even the personality of Jesus does not stand by itself as it seemed to once. We see in him the power of the common nature. We see in him the effect of forces which had been in operation since the world was. He was no stranger upon the earth. He was the Son of God, but he was no less the Son of man. He was the flowering of a nation's history, the flowering of humanity. ”

“ Christianity, like every other religion, has its mythology,—a mythology so intertwined with the veritable facts of its early history, so braided and welded with its first beginnings, that history and myth are not always distinguishable the one from the other. Every historic religion, that has won for itself a conspicuous place in the world's history, has evolved from a core of fact a nimbus of legendary matter which criticism cannot always separate, and which the popular faith does not seek to separate, from the solid parts of the system. ”

“ Religion is the atmosphere of the soul, necessary to the healthful action of its life, to be purified, but not renounced.
Every one has a Theology, who has even a vague idea of a God; and every one has this who has an idea of something higher and better than himself, higher and better than any of his fellow-men. The Atheist therefore may have a God, though he does not call him so. For God is not a word, not a sound: he is the Infinite Reality which we see, more or less dimly, more or less truly, rising above us, and above all our race. ”

“ Not wooing, but worship, is found at its shrines and altars. In the grand hierarchies of science, of literature, of art, there is a veritable priesthood, as pure, as unworldly, as can be found in any church. It is delightful to look upon its work, upon its calm and loving enthusiasm. The naturalist brings under his microscope, the smallest and most unattractive specimen of organized matter, and goes into ecstasies over it, that might seem ridiculous; but no, this is a piece of holy nature—a link in the chain of its majestic harmonies. ”

“ With what plea will you exhort me, "If you would rid yourself of intellectual mysteries, come with us, and see the stuff your thought is made of: if you would stand free of ideal illusions, count with us the medullary waves that have run together into the flood-tide of what you call your conscience: if you would shake off superstition, look at the way in which the image of dead men will hang about the fancy of a savage, or the personification of an abstract quality imposes on the ignorance of simple times"? Is our wisdom to be gathered by going back to the age before our errors? ”

“ Faith leans first on the spiritual nature of man, and not on demonstrable science. It would not be faith, if it were only a sharper sight. It is insight, not sight. It springs from its own root, not primarily from the intellect. As we love our wives and children with something besides the judgment, or the logical faculty, so we love God with the heart, and not with the understanding. We stand erect, with open eyes, when we are seeking truth; we fall on our knees with closed eyelids, when we are seeking God! Religion is not the rule of three, but the golden rule ”

“ In selfhood, necessary as it is, there is no virtue, and little joy. Outflow from it—love, generosity, disinterestedness—embraces the whole sphere of our culture and welfare.
Can there be any doubt upon either of these points—either the culture or welfare?
Upon the culture, I say; upon what makes for human improvement. There is evil enough in the world; but what nation or age ever approved of it? What people ever praised selfishness, injustice, falsifying of speech or trust? No literature ever celebrated them. No religion ever enjoined them. ”

“ Without this brooding sense of a Divine love, of a Heaven beyond this world, of a Providence guiding human affairs, men would not long have the heart to study, because all things would seem to be going nowhere. Without such a Heavenly Friend to trust, such an immortal progress to hope, all things would seem to revolve in a circle. Not to believe in something more than a God of Law is to be without God in the world, is to be without hope. ”

“ Paul is there without his thorn in the flesh, Luther without his impatience, Washington without his fiery choler, Lincoln without his coarseness, Dante and Milton without their scorn. History strips off the indignities of earth when she dresses her heroes for immortality. And the transfigurations she gives us are nearer the truth than the limitations of ordinary life. The man is more truly himself in the epic strain of public action, with spirit braced and harness on, than in the subsidence and undress of the closet. ”

“ The world has felt horror-stricken whenever any brave and more believing spirit has ventured to ask the meaning of one of these theological tags and titles. But how much less wholesome is living water, if drunk out of a leaf, or the palm of one's hand, than if presented on a salver, in a curiously jewelled flagon, by a priest in livery? How much has theological ingenuity of statement and systematic divinity, which it takes the study of a life to understand, added to the power of the simplicity of Christ as he unfolds himself in the Sermon on the Mount? ”

“ I believe that never and nowhere has there been manifested, to so great extent, such conscientious and self-forgetful love of truth for its own sake as may be found in the scientific investigations of the present day. Such accuracy of research, such microscopic delicacy of measurement, such patient and unprejudiced examination, I believe to be unequalled in the history of man. This proves that, in spite of the frauds and falseness of which I spoke, the age is really sound at heart. Theologians sometimes speak of the flippancy and conceit of the science of the day. ”

“ It is that, which satire and false criticism have misconstrued, when they have said that love of kindred, of friends, of country, of God himself, is but self-love. The mistake arises from that primal and vital part and participation which ourself has in every thing that we enjoy or love or adore. This magnificent I—and I emphasize it, because all meanness is thought to be concentred in that word—this mysterious and magnificent I—this that one means, when he says I—we may utter, but can never explain, nor fully express it. ”

“ Let processions of men and women and children, every year, bring flowers, bring garlands of honor, to their lowly tombs!
But there is another form of self-consecration which is yet more essential, and which is universal. And yet because it is essential and universal, the very life-spring of the world's growth; because it is no signal benefit, but the common blessing of our existence; because it moulds our unconscious infancy, and mingles with our thoughtless childhood, and is an incorporate part of our being, it is apt to be overlooked and forgotten. ”

“ But selfhood is simpler. It is the instinctive, instantaneous, uncalculating rush of our faculties, to preserve, protect and help ourselves. Selfishness proposes to take advantage of others; selfhood only to take care of itself. It is not, as a principle of our nature, a depraved instinct; animals possess it. It is not moral, or immoral, but simply unmoral. It is a simple force, necessary to our self-preservation, to our individuality, to our personality. The highest moral natures feel it as well as the lowest. The martyr, who gives up every thing else, holds his integrity fast and dear. ”

“ But I maintain that science itself, philosophy and free inquiry, however divorced from religious institutions and dogmas, were never so humble, reverential, and Christian as since they partly emancipated themselves from theological or ecclesiastical censure and suspicion. For ages science knelt to religion as she went to her crucible or laboratory, like the sexton passing the altar in a Catholic cathedral, and with as little thought or feeling as he, simply to avert censure, while she pursued inquiries she knew would banish the superstition she pretended to honor. ”

“ Think of Newton, meditating and exploring the solar system, in the simple love of truth, without let or hindrance from ecclesiastical intermeddlers, and compare him with Galileo, lifting his telescope under the malediction of the priesthood of Rome.
No: let science be as free as light, as brave as sunbeams, as honest as photography! Encourage her to chronicle her conclusions with fearless and unreproached fidelity. She will doubtless make many things which have been long associated with religion look foolish and incredible. ”

“ No matter how mechanical the age may become, no matter how the idea of freedom may be eliminated from its thought, the great heart of humanity beats still in its bosom, and the voice of a strong, free personality will sooner or later arouse it to an answering consciousness. The very bands which it sets about personality will make its power more strongly felt when it is perceived. ”

“ In lonely watch-towers the fires of genius have burned, but to waste and consume the lamp of life, while they gave light to the world.
It is no answer to say that the victims of intellectual toil, broken down in health or fortune, have counted their work, a privilege and joy. As well deny the martyr's sacrifice, because he has joyed in his integrity. And many of the world's intellectual benefactors, have been martyrs. Socrates died in prison, as a public malefactor; for the healing wisdom he offered his people, deadly poison was the reward. ”

“ It is the obvious law of Divine Providence, it is and has been a great law of human progress, that Truth shall not be flashed upon the mind at once, either in religion or in any other of the great fields of interest and occupation to man; but that it shall be conquered and won through the medium of slow and gradual approach, even in the midst and by the help of misunderstanding and error. It is thus, doubtless, that men are trained to appreciate rightly the value of the truths and principles which they ultimately gain. ”

“ But it is only so religion can shed some husks, and get rid of some embarrassments. It is, in short, only just such assaults and criticisms from science and experience that ever induces religion to strain out the flies from her honey; to dissociate what is accidental in faith from what is essential and permanent. And, when science and culture have gathered in the full harvest of this wonderful season of discovery and speculation, we may expect to find faith stripped of many garments, now worshipped, which ignorance and fear put upon her for protection and defence ”

“ And the morally insane, the prodigal, when he returns to reason and virtue, comes to himself.
"A man's self," says Thackeray, "must always be serious to him, under whatever mask or disguise or uniform he presents it to the public." Yes, though it were as mime, harlequin, jester fool almost; nor could there be a more deplorable or desperate condition for a human being, than to account himself nothing, or nothing worth, or worthy only to be the butt of universal scorn and contempt. From this utter ruin, every man is protected by that mysterious and momentous personality that dwells within him. ”

“ But is the State or the nation ever so truly divine as when it is owned as the voice of God, calling all the people to maintain equal justice, to recognize universal interests, to embody Christian ethics in public law? And despite our local mortifications and occasional misgivings, what nation is now so strong and firm, what government so confident and so promising, as our own? What but freedom, fidelity to rational principles and ideal justice, give it this strength? ”