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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

The Religion of the Heart [Discourses, 1st Series, No. 2]

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The Religion of the Heart.

Discourses

1st Series. No. 2.

J. A. & R. A. Reid, Printers. Providence

1882.
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The Religion of the Heart.

This day, friends, is sacred to the expression of human love. For weeks past old and young have been anticipating it as a season of special joy. Deft fingers have been busy making little tokens of affection, and the inventive mind has plied its vocation in devising ways and means of surprising others and making them happy. Non-Christian in its early origin, never exclusively Christian in the manner of its use, Christmas always was, and is still, a day of good cheer, of kindly remembrances, of smiling faces and overflowing hearts. It is a sort of Sun day at large for no small portion of the world. Among ourselves we find the regard for it all but universal. The rich celebrate it, the poor celebrate it. Boys and girls have a mortgage upon it, but so also have men and women. It annihilates differences of age, making us all children. It brings our families into the closest and most sympathetic relations. It causes an ever new recognition of human brotherhood as it blends the desires of all classes and conditions in the harmonizing atmosphere of a common purpose. Around the Yule Log, at the foot of the Christmas Tree, and in the search for the contents of stockings which fabulous old Santa Claus has filled, Love reigns with an undisputed sway, blessing us, even when we know it not, with such spiritual treasures as far excel all the material prizes she brings. Melly Tismas! shouts the little voice just able to make articulate sounds. Merry Christmas! answer the blessed and blessing papa and mamma. Merry Christmas! ring forth and back the vigorous shouts of childhood and youth. Merry Christmas is the cry borne along in more sober cadence upon the wishes of older but page 4 still tender and loving relatives and friends. Gradgrind softens a little in his call for the hard facts of life, and Old Scrooge goes home to dream and to come forth on the morrow a wiser and a better man. God bless you, all holy influences, past, present and future, attend you and yours, is the message speeding from lip to lip and from heart to heart. Even poor little Tiny Tim, whose lot seems so hard, is cheered by some kind thought or word or deed, and sends up his little aspiration, enough to allow any day, "God bless us every one."

There are hours and seasons when this platform stands for the Free Religion of the mind; there are other hours and seasons when it stands for the Practical Religion of the hand; to-day, it seems to me, it inhales the spirit of which the air is full, and stands for the Natural Religion of the Heart. And I am inexpressibly glad that it does so stand. That the mistaken notion that our movement admits of 110 exercise of the affectional nature, that it is purely intellectual and metaphysical, receives no support here; that in our best moments we sense a something higher and deeper and broader than mere logic, a mysterious power which none can describe, but whose action all feel and whose fruits all see. And so among those to-day singing peace on earth and good-will to men, we take our place. Under no vaulted roof, before no Catholic altar, in no Protestant Christian pulpit, can the Heart's spontaneous worship be more fittingly rendered than right here in this hall, consecrated for the time being to liberty. Because we are free, and all the more strongly in proportion as we are free, we sing the redeeming power of love in the human soul.

Some people seem to think the heart an element of weakness in the genus man; it belittles him; it is something for him to be ashamed of; it must be subjected to his reason. The poet Saxe has written,

"The head erect, serene and cool,
Endowed with Reason's art,
Was sot aloft to guide and rule
The throbbing, wayward heart."

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Now I do not believe the head was set aloft to do any such thing. I do not believe there is any rightful relation of master and subject between these organs. And I do not believe the throbbing heart is any more likely to be wayward than the cool, calculating head. History is full of facts showing how often the instincts of the heart have been wiser than the logic of the head. I am no advocate of the subjection of the reason. That must be free, vigorous and strong; but science has not yet sounded the depths, it has not yet reached the limit of its great work. It cannot ignore any fact of life, and no man in this universe where accidents are unknown, has a right to say that the instinctive premonitions of the heart, the intuitions, if you please, of the soul, are accidental, and therefore unworthy a sober second thought. The fact that in our Civil War the negro's heart was nearer right than the white man's head means something. The fact that women and womanly men, representing heart, are so often on the side of Truth when there is nothing to share but its wretched crust, and the majority of men, representing intellect, are so often on the side of error, strengthening it and making it popular, means something. They indicate at least, what the most philosophical and radical are inclined to accept as true, that the relative places of the functions of Thought and Love are not to be determined by any exclusive claim on the side of either. That they are in reality co-equal partners, together winning life's victories; together sharing its defeats.

Emerson sings the inspired philosophy when he shows their inter-dependence and inter-marriage in and for all time.

"Two well assorted travelers use
The highway, Eros and the Muse.
From the twins is nothing hidden,
To the pair is naught forbidden;
Hand in hand the comrades go
Every nook of nature through;
Each for other they were born,
Each can other best adorn;
They know one only mortal grief
Past all balsam or relief,
page 6 When by false companions crossed,
The pilgrims have each other lost."

And how often these life pilgrims are crossed by false friends. Science itself, aiming as it does at exact truth in the physical world, and adopting a method therein all but faultless, frequently makes serious mistakes in dealing with the finer sides of human nature. The mind of man is hardly conscious yet of a spiritual science. Certainly it does not comprehend, science in the realm of spirit. We are living in an intellectual age. Physics have planted their standard on the outer wall. There is no question which is beyond the reach of keen investigation. The hunger for material facts is unprecedented. And it is well. It is a step forward, though only a step. First the natural or earthly, and afterward that which is spiritual. Elizabeth Pea-body, referring to the pleasure children take in playing in the sand and making mud-pies, says in somewhat transcendental phrase, childhood has a tendency to the earth. This remark applies very pertinently to the present condition of our investigations into the mysteries of things. Science, if I may venture to say it, is in the mud-pie period. It has a tendency to the earthy. It is dealing almost wholly with the more elemental facts of physical existence. By and by it will lift itself to a higher work. It will do for the spiritual what it is now doing for the material; and then the qualities now underrated, which make the affectional nature, the qualities by which we are drawn in irresistible attraction to the high and noble in persons and in ideals, will receive new emphasis.

High thanks, I owe you, excellent lovers, says Emerson again, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. These are new poetry of the first Bard,—poetry without stop,—hymn, ode, and epic, poetry still flowing, Apollo and the Muses chanting still.

"O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red,
All things through thee take nobler form;
page 7 And look beyond the earth,
And is the mill-round of our fate
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me, too, thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are, through thy friendship, fair."

What blessing in all this wide universe can be richer than to have a friend or to be one; to hold a relation with other hearts, healthy and helpful, free from suspicion and free from guile. It has been said that all mankind love a lover, but love is often impatient of logical analysis and beyond it. When you ask for reasons why you are drawn to this person and indifferent to that person, you can find no very satisfactory answer always applicable. Sometimes it is people who agree most nearly in matters of intellectual belief who are the strongest friends, but not always. Sometimes people who agree very nearly are not and cannot be intimate friends. Sometimes, spite of very great disagreement, there exists an intimate companionship of heart and soul. I do not say that the reason can be ignored in such matters. It has a rightful voice always and everywhere, but let it not try to usurp the place of love. Let it not arrogate to itself her high functions.

When two human souls are drawn into the closest of relations and become one in a divine marriage, how cheap logic seems. Could it hold unquestioned sway it would destroy all the romance, all the idealism, all the divinity of life. I once knew a lady who was never married until long after middle age. When the courtship began she said to her intended, "Now, John, we are too old to indulge in sentiment. Let us show a little common sense." Well, that inclines us to smile, but when we think of it, what a sad thing it was. As if one ever could be too old to indulge in sentiment. To be a lover, to allow the sentiment that free play which a healthy falling in love prompts, is like discovering a new world. How much wiser would my friend have been had she said, "We are old, John, but let us keep our page 8 hearts young, let us never permit the hard facts of life to grind the sentiment out of us."

I think sometimes, friends, in the hurry and bustle of the world we forget or ignore what we may call the little amenities of life. We must keep our business up to the average standard, we must do just about so much charitable or reformatory work, we must agitate public opinion, and all that. True, we must do so, we must earn our livings, we must help the unfortunate over there, we must demand justice for all, but let us not underrate (and I apply this criticism as much to myself and my own class as to any other), let us not underrate the smaller, perchance, but not less weighty matters nearer our own firesides. Let us resist the tendency which all business and all reform life generates, of swamping the little thoughts and words and acts of love in the great demands of the industrial and social world. What was so inexpressibly tender, what struck so deep a chord in the sensitive nature, amid all the habiliments of mourning with which our streets were lined when Garfield died, as the dirty and ragged shreds of black and white hanging from the little ten-foot hovel door, and the little boot-black's stand draped from his own earnings, in attestation of the general sorrow. It is not the quantity, it is the quality; it is not the act itself so much as the spirit prompting it, that tells. I have a dear friend, a great soul in a little body, who has done and is doing in this world more good than can be estimated. She said to me once, the most satisfactory response to anything I ever undertake comes not from the rich and the well-to-do, but from the poor and the ill-to-do whom I have tried to help. Their simpler and less pretentious returns have for me a real and lasting value. The simple offerings of the heart, warm in spite of poverty and suffering and sin, they are dearer, friends, than untold wealth to one who has ever received and appreciated them. They may not be the appeal for the spirit of equity, but they are the deed which does very much toward cultivating the spirit of love. They may not be like the sermon from the desk, but they are like the flowers, which when they come here to greet us, often page 9 preach a better sermon than human thought can conceive or human lips can articulate.

There seems a certain relationship between the great demand for justice and the little deed of love. Justice grows out of consideration for others. At least that is an element which enters largely into its composition. The little thought or word or deed of love has the same basis. It hardly seems possible that one can demand justice—this consideration for others in the mass—in an unselfish spirit, unless at the same time he is showing love—the consideration for others individually. I sometimes wonder, as a reformer and radical, if the charge of coldness and disregard of the little things of life, so often made against us, can be true? Do we ever tread unnecessarily upon personal feelings, are we ever unnecessarily severe, are we guilty, in the small circle, of the same lack of fine feeling for others, which we condemn in the great one? If we are, we ought to begin at once the reformation of ourselves. This day ought to summon us to a new and closer attention to the little deeds of kindness and the little words of love, which for old as well as for young are essential to introduce the heavenly kingdom upon earth. I feel my hole nature protesting against the idea that love needs to be curbed, and that its expression is especially unmanly. I affirm that when a man is ashamed to kiss his friend in the depot, or to wheel his baby in its carriage on the public street, it is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness. I affirm that when, immediately after his inauguration as President, Rutherford B. Hayes kissed his wife, and on a similar occasion James A. Garfield kissed his mother, it was because both were great men, and that, great as they were, both were ennobled by the act. Such things are criticised by small minds as weak sentimentalism. They are only the cropping out, under most appropriate circumstances, of the Religion of the Heart. It is by no means the smallest claim of a man to an assured immortality that, amid all the influences of his public career, he keeps that simplicity of natural affection which causes him, in the supreme moment of his life, to forget that the eyes of the page 10 whole people are upon him, in his desire to kiss his wife or his mother.

Our ideas of the proprieties are exceedingly conventional. We are apt to think most of all that the important thing is to have the head right. It is a great mistake. It is far more important to have the heart right. Father Taylor, of whom Dr. Bartol said two hundred millions of miles measure the diameter of the earth's orbit for the yard-stick of astronomy; the circuit of his revolution was a parallax for the race—Father Taylor once remarked of a great Rationalist with whom, of course, he could not agree intellectually, "There is a screw loose in him somewhere; but I have laid my ear close to his heart, and have never been able to detect any jar in the machinery. He must go to heaven, for Satan would not know what to do with him if he got him. Give the devil his rations, it will change the climate, and the emigration will be that way." And the big-hearted Bethel preacher always scorned the superficial distinctions of belief, planting himself on the realities. No man could interest a more varied congregation, from Jenny Lind and Charles Dickens to the most ignorant tar. The reason was not far to seek. It was because he preached a religion all had in common, the Religion of the Heart. Like Confucius he seemed to say—My doctrine is easy to understand. It consists only in having the heart right, and in loving one's neighbor as one's self.

In the old anti-slavery struggle, when the men of intellect, from Daniel Webster down, turned against the cause of the slave, the abolitionists used to fall back in sublime faith upon the natural instincts of the heart. Take the mines, take the Harwich fishing-skiffs, take the Lowell mills, take all the coin and the cotton, said Mr. Phillips, still the day must be ours, thank God, for the hearts—the hearts are on our side! It is just so with every good thing. The great idea, the profound principle, the new Messiah, always comes to us saying, give me thy heart, knowing well that where the heart is, there is victory. Who shall gauge the power of the affectional nature in man? Who page 11 shall assume to subject it to the reasoning faculty? The heart goes everywhere, carrying with it the sunshine of constant and divine blessing.

What is a home without love? What may it not be with love? There has been formed recently an Institute of Heredity, whose central thought is that child-bearing is a science. So it is, but not, as is sometimes claimed, like the rearing of animals, a physical science only. It is my profound belief that all the physical science the head has discovered or may ever discover, great as may be its importance as a factor, will be powerless to produce beautiful and healthy children, unless love issues the summons, welcomes them to its arms, and surrounds them through every hour of development with its unpolluted and un-chilled atmosphere. It is not alone wise understanding of physical and mental conditions before and after birth, though these I hope I need not say are of vital importance, but it is deep, pure, unselfish affection;—it is the holiness of the heart relation between the parents; it is the good-night kiss with all that it implies in the children,—it is the real love and the inevitable expression of it, which a man feels and remembers in all after years.

What is our dealing with the unfortunate, the erring, the criminal even, without love? For long ages harsh treatment, iron bars, the scaffold, have been trying to do the impossible. Wherever, under a higher philosophy, the heart has had an opportunity, it has achieved, with rare exceptions, most remarkable success. The cure of pauperism, the cure of crime, is love; love in cooperation with reason as unquestioned benefactor and friend. Love, says one, is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames. It is well that we should use every instrumentality to fan these little sparks. Thrice holy is the day whose influence is to keep alive this generous page 12 flame. We can well afford to have more such. We cannot spare the one we already have.

Of course I am not blind to the fact that, like most good things, this day is subject to seeming abuse. The ostentation of gifts of great money value, but with no other significance, and the tendency to extravagance, these are bad beyond dispute. But after all, may it not be that people act themselves concerning this as concerning all things else. The ostentatious will be ostentatious. The extravagant will be extravagant. There is, however, a philosophy of gifts and giving which these evils cannot overcome, and which it is well for us to understand. The best thing thou canst give another is a part of thyself. Thus it happens that the work of the hand is so much prized. It represents the labor of the giver, and may represent the thoughtful interest of the giver in the recipient. Thus it happens that a book standing for ideas held in common by two persons is a most fitting expression of their mutual regard. Thus it happens that a painting or any other work of art or usefulness, appealing to common sympathies, is always in order. Whatever the gift may be, it should, if I mistake not, speak of the giver. It should be an expression of the giver's love. It will be seen at once that this criterion of judgment leaves out, or may leave out, entirely the value of the thing given in dollars and cents. It is not what is used as a means, it is what the means is used for; it is not the vehicle of expression, it is what is expressed, which is the vital thing. Christmas gifts, looked upon as articles of merchandise simply, though fashioned in purest gold and costliest jewels, are cheap and beneath contempt. I do not so regard them. They are to me a means for taking us out of ourselves, out of the supreme selfishness of much of our living, and opening our hearts to an occasional consideration of somebody else. They touch, somehow, a fine chord of feeling, they recall to us sacred memories of the past, they leave with us impressions which extend far into the future. They are a blessing to the receiver, they are a far greater blessing to the giver. I fancy someone may say this is a pretty page 13 picture, but it is not true to the facts. The picture is idealized; the facts are cheap and of the earth, earthy. Well, when you have condemned idealism, I should like to know what there is left which is not earthy. The ideal is of all things the most real. It is the only real, and, strange as it may seem, he plants his feet upon the most solid and enduring foundations, who idealizes most and best. Wherever love is there is the ideal. Lovers idealize each other, the parent idealizes his child, and the child its parent, peoples idealize their leaders, the world idealizes its martyrs, guides, benefactors and redeemers. If there is anything which speaks of infinite possibilities for the human race it is its worship of the ideal. Forever blessed are the smallest tokens of remembrance idealized into divine messengers bearing from friend to friend the warm, unstinted greetings of the human heart.

There is another side of the Religion of the Heart, friends, which ought not to be omitted on this day. This is the closing season of the year, and I have said that the expressions of love which this Christmas festival brings recall to us sacred memories of the past. It is a day of joy, but to many of us a day of chastened joy. Some voices that rang out Merry Christmas on our ears in the days that are gone, do not speak to us now. Some hands that once worked to make us happy, do not work for us now. Some hearts that once responded beat to beat to ours, do not visibly respond now. We have laid away all that was earthly of the aged wife and mother, the beloved companion and guide of long and pleasant years; we have said good-bye to revered husband and father; we have tried, oh! so hard and all in vain, to hold on this side the dear children, strong in the vigor of youth, but succumbing before the tread of sudden or of slow and wasting disease; we have seen the fading of mental as well as physical power in those near and dear to us, until death itself seemed to the reason, though never to the heart, a blessing; even little budding babyhood has vanished from our sight almost before it had learned to look into our eves and to nestle in our arms,—the memory of all these expe page 14 riences comes thronging upon us now. Somehow it makes Christmas a day reaching into the infinite, its boundary lines beyond our vision. We cannot send our material gifts there, but our hearts go out in streams of love into the great unknown. And if we cannot see and know the dear ones still, we can at least keep their memory green.

"They passed away from sight and hand,
A slow, successive train;
To memory's heart, a gathered band,
Our lost ones come again.

Not back to earth, a second time,
The mortal path to tread;
They walk in their appointed clime,
The dead, but not the dead.

Beyond all we can know or think
Beyond the earth and sky,
Beyond Time's lone and dreaded brink,
Their deathless dwellings lie.

Dear thoughts that once our union made.
Death does not disallow:
In spirit one, while here they stayed,
We're one in spirit now."

And so we have suggested to us by this most tender of all experiences that immortal unity for which Natural Religion stands. While the intellect is measuring the shape of the cranium, considering the character of the features, and emphasizing differences, the heart finds itself in an ever-widening circle which reaches beyond known history in the past and forward into history yet to be. Back it travels from present companionship, from near and dear to remote friend, thence to the great and good whose record has won its homage, until it takes in, what the mind cannot conceive, still less describe, the universal love and power. Here it finds a man taking his life in his hand in order to show that his country is the world and his countrymen are all mankind; there a woman carrying the light of truth and love into prison-cells and into prisoners' lives. Here it sees a scaffold for one who dared in the nineteenth century page 15 remember those in bonds as bound with them; there it sees a cross bearing the crucified body of one who said in the first century, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, ye should do even so unto them. Enlarging the scope of its view as time flows on, it is no longer satisfied to linger in Palestine and on the banks of the Jordan. It penetrates Greece to find Socrates drinking the fatal hemlock; it wanders back to Kapilavastu, among the mountains of India, to exchange greetings with the Hindu saint; it seeks and finds the great Chinese Teacher of Equity and the Persian Prophet of Justice. The circle of its affections extends around them all at last. And then, with all the divinity of the past pouring in its flood of inspiration, it returns to the present, saying, of a truth I perceive that all nations of men have been created of one blood; that mankind are only one great family in whom nature has implanted mutual love. Tell me there is no heart here! Tell me Radical Religion cannot join in the celebration of Christmas I Tell me the day of all others most sacred to a general expression of love does not belong to us!

It belongs to the children, yours and mine, as well as those of more conservative parentage. They will not surrender it, and I will set the natural instincts of their little hearts against all the sophistry of logic in older heads. Learning wisdom from them, I can but think that if there be any influence in this world, which tends to soften, warm, and make more loving, human relations, we should encourage it. There are such influences coming from the life of Jesus, from the lives of all the great and good. Independent of him there certainty are such influences connected with this day. Well may seen and unseen powers sing peace on earth and good will to men, for here and now, as once in old Judea, is born a spirit of universal brotherhood and love, cradled no longer in a manger, but in the deep recesses of the aspiring soul. Let us surrender ourselves to its sway. Let it win us to the holy order of humanity. So shall we enjoy a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and useful New Year.

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A Radical Journal,

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