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Leader (1850-1860), 26th February 1853, Edition 1 of 1, Page 212, Untitled Article

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      pular fondness for portraits of great men , for their autographs , and even for relics . The person of Jesus Christ has left a much greater impression on the heart y of men than his doctrines have made on the mind and conscience of Christendom . " And this might be put in as a plea for fiction . The very merit and purpose o £ fiction lie therein ; for « ' All men need something to poetize and idealize their life -a little , something which they value for more than its use , and which is a syrahol of their emancipai tion from the mere materialism and drudgery of daily life . Rich men attempt to do this with beautiful houses , with costly furniture , with sumptuous food , and

      • wine too good for the tables of pontiffs / thereby often only thickening and gilding the chain which binds the soul to earth . Some men idealize their life a little with books , music , flowers ; with science , poetry , and art ; with thought . But such men are comparatively rare , even in Scotland and New England—two or three in the hundred , not more . In America the cheap newspaper is the most common instrument used for this purpose , a thing not without its value . But the majority of men do this idealizing by the affections , which furnish the chief poetry of their life—the wife and husband delighting in one another , both in their children . Burns did not exaggerate in his ' Cottar ' s Saturday Night / when he painted the

      labourer s joy : — ' His wee bit ingle , blinkin' bonnily , His clean hearth-stane , his thriftie wifie ' s smile , The lisping infant prattling on his knee , Does a' his weary carking cares beguile , An' makes him quite forget his labour and his toil . ' " I have heard a boorish pedant wonder how a woman could spend so many years of her life with little children , and be content ! In her satisfaction he found a proof of her inferiority , and thought her but the ' servant of a wooden cradle / herself almost as wooden . But in that gentle companionship she nursed herself and fed a higher faculty than our poor pedant , with his sophomoric wit , had yet brought to consciousness , and out of her wooden cradle got more than he had learned to know . A physician once , with unprofessional impiety , complained that we are not born men , but babies . He did not see the value of infancy as a delight to the mature , and for the ^ education of the heart- At one period of life we need objects of instinctive passion , at another , of instinctive benevolence without

      passion . " I am not going to undervalue the charm of wisdom , nor the majestic joy which comes from loving principles of right ; but if I could have only one of them , give me the joy of the affections—my delight in others—theirs in ipe—the joy of delighting , rather than the delight of enjoying . Here is a woman with large intellect , and attainments which match her native powers , but with a geniua for love , developed in its domestic , social , patriotic , human form , with a wealth of affection which surpasses even her affluence of intellect . Her chief delight is to bless the men who need her blessing . Naturalists carry mind into matter , and seek the eternal truth of God in the perishing forms of the fossil plant , or the evanescent

      tides of the sea ; she carries love into the lanes and kennels of society , to give bread to the needy , eyes to the blind , mind to the ignorant , and a soul to men floating and weltering in this sad pit of society . I do not undervalue intellect in any of its nobler forms ; but if God gave me my choice to have either the vast intellect of a Newton , an Aristotle , a Shakspeare , a Homer , the ethical insight of the great legislators , the moral sense of Moses , or Menu , the conscience of men who discover justice , and organize unalienable right into human institutions—or else to take the heroic heart which so loves mankind , and I were to choose what brought its possessor the greatest joy—I would surely take , not the great head , but tho great heart , the power of love before the power of thought . " How in earlier life this love is nurtured , Parker has well indicated : —

      " Sec the array of natural means provided for the development and education of the heart . Spiritual love , joining with the instinctive passion which peoples the world , attracts mankind into little binary groups , families of two . Therein we are all born of love . Love watches over ^ ur birth . Our earliest knowledge of mankind 18 of one animated by the instinctivo power of affection , developed into conncious love . The first human feeling extended towards us is a mother ' s love . Even the rude woman in savage Patagonia turns her sunniest aspect to her child ; the father does the same . In our earliest years we are almost wholly in the hands of women , in whom the heart emphatically prevails over the head . They attract and win , while man only invades und conquers . The first human force we meet

      is woman ' s love . All this tends to waken and unfold the affections , to give them their culture and hasten their growth . The other children of kindred blood asking or giving kiud offices ; affectionate relations and friends , who turn out the fuirest sido of nature and themselves to the new-born stranger—nil of these aro helps in the education of the heart . All men unconsciously put on amiable faces in the prcucncc of children , thinking it is not good to cause these little ones to offend . As the roughest of mon will gather flowers for little children , ho in their presence he turns out ' the silver lining' of Inn cloudy character to the young immortals , and would not have them know the darker part . Tho sourest man is not wholly hoiKsluHs when lie will not blaspheme before his son .

      " Tho child ' s affection gets developed on the smallest scale nt first . Tho mother ' s love tempts forth tho boii ' h ; he loves the bosom that feeds him , the lips that eareHH , the person that loves . Soon the circle widenx , and include * brothers and siHter . % and familiar friends ; then gradually enlarges more and more , the affections titreiigthciiing as their empire upreads . So love travels from jiorson to person , from tho mother or nurse to the family at home ; then to the relatives and frequent guests ; next to the children at school , to the neighbourhood , the town , the State , tho nation ; and at Jiwt , manly love takes in tho whole family of mankind , counting nothing alien that ia human . "

      Tho affections aro the Shekinah , tho presence of God in tho dwellings of men . Tho piety , therefore , which belongs to tho affectiona is , perhaps , of all others the most needful , and that form of Religion which pays most attention to tho culture and healthy activity of this piety , is tho form beat suited to human life . Par he it from us to say that Christianity does not recognise this ; it is emphatically tho lleligion of Love . But in practice have wo not seen that the dogmatic elements have assumed un-< luo predominance , that Creed had taken precedence of Conduct , that Faith has been hold of quite infinitely more account than Love , and that udhoreiK'M to certain rituals has been mado tho touchstone of a religious heart P la this tho fact , or is it not F Will any one say that the Church has Boon clearly , and holily practised tho piety demanded of it P Will any one aay that having to control the naturally erratic tendencies ot

      furnished by the very constitution of the family , but little value p m what is called the ' superior education' of mankind . The class of men that lead the Christian world have but a small development of affection . Patriotism is the only form of voluntary love which it is popular with such men to praise—that only for its pecuniary value ; charity seems thought a weakness , to be praised only on Sundays ; avarice is the better week-day virtue ; friendship is deemed too romantic for a trading town . Philanthropy is mocked at by statesmen and leading capitalists ,- it is the standing butt of the editor , whereat he shoots his shaft , making up in its barb and venom for his arrow ' s lack of length and point . "

      is laced thereon men , to raise their aspirations above daily needs and daily realities , the Church has endeavoured to control them by the activity of Love—thus proceeding logically to move men by their emotions , instead of lllogicaily to move them by their intellects P No one can say this , because every one knows that , speak with what emphasis it may on the necessity of Love , it lays its great stress of requisition on Faith . Parker says :- — " Notwithstanding the high place which the affections hold in the natural economy of man , and the abundant opportunities for their culture and development

      Here , then , the function of a Church is clearly indicated . It should counteract these tendencies . There is exaggeration , or rather let us say onesidedness , in the following passage ; but few will deny the truth ot what it affirms : — « Hitherto justice has not been done to the affections in religion . We have been taught to fear God , not to love him ; to see Him in the earthquake and the storm , m the deiuge , or the ' ten plagues of Egypt / in the ' black death / or the cholera ; not to see God in the morning sun , or in the evening full of radiant gentleness . Love has little to do with the popular religion of our time . God is h the darkness to out the faults

      painted as a dreadful Eye , which bores throug spy of men who sneak and skulk about the world ; or as a naked , bony Arm , uplifted to crush his children down with horrid squelch to endless hell . The long line of scoffers from Lucian , their great hieropbant , down to Voltaire and his living coadjutors , have not shamed the priesthood from such revolting images of deity . Sterner men , who saw the loveliness of the dear God , and set it forth in holy speech and holy life—to meet a fate on earth far harder than the scoffer ' s doomthey cannot yet teach men that love of God casts every fear away . In the Catnohc mythology the Virgin Mary , its most original creation , represents pure love—she , and she alone . Hence is she the popular object of worship in all Catholic countries . But the popular Protestant sects have the Roman Godhead after Mary is taken

      A nfflV « When this is so in religion , do you wonder at the lack of love in law and custom , in politics and trade ? Shall we write satires on mankind ? Rather let us make its apology . Man is a baby yet ; the time for the development of conscious love has not arrived . Let us not say , ' No man eat fruit of thee hereafter ; let us wait ; dig about the human tree and encourage it ; in time it shall put torth ngs . Slowly as the world moves through its wondrous orbit , it mores into clearer spaces lighted by diviner stars ; and the meditative mind is torced to conclude , as our great poet concludes , I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs , And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns . The darkness lingers but the dawn is here , and we see that

      " Slowly vengeance fades out of human institutions , slowly love steals in ;—the wounded soldier must be healed , and paid , his widow fed , and children comforted ; the slaves must be set free ; the yoke of kings and nobles must be made lighter , be broken and thrown away ; all men must have their rights made sure ; the poor must be fed , must have his human right to a vote , to justice , truth , and love ; the ignorant must be educated , the State looking to it that no one straggles in the rear and so is lost;—the criminals—I mean the little criminals committing petty crimes—must be instructed , healed , and inanlined ; the lunatic must be restored to his intellect : the blind , the deaf and dumb , the idiots , must be taught , and all

      mankind be blest . The attempt to banish war out of the world , odium from theology , capital punishment out of the State , the devil and his bell from the Christian mythology—the effort to expunge hate from the popular notion of God , and fear from our religious consciousness—all this shows the growth of loye in the spirit of men . A few men see that while irreligion is fear of a devil , religion is love : one half is piety , —the love of God as truth , justice , love , as Infinite Deity ; the rest is morality—self-love , and the love of man , a service of God by the normal use , development , and enjoyment of every faculty of the spirit , every limb of the body , every particle of power we possess over man or over matter . A few men see that God in love , and made t ho world o f love aa substance , from love 8 B motive , and for love as end . "

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      We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages ifcsf > lT _ fJoHTHK-

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      212 T H E t E AD E Si . 'PBaotbbat ,

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      CIIAITKtt VIII . I > I G T U K . K I ) K S T It () Y E R 8 . rICTURE brokers , picture frame makers , house painters and decorators arc never deterred by any scruples from writing themselves down proficients in the art of restoring the pictures of the Old Masters . One possesses a famous compound , a newly-invented preparation ; another , an extraordinary elixir , concocted from a very old recipe , which never fails to renew the colours of old paintings , however

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      " Who in contemplating one of Raphael ' s flnotU pictunm , fr » Hh from tho mimtor ' H ham ] , ovor ' beHtovreda thought <> n tho wretched little worm which worltH ita < lo « t , ruction ?" Mauia . - Kdukwouth .

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      BY HENRY ME 1 UMTT .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 26, 1853, page 212, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1975/page/20/