Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1878 — CALAMITY AND CHARITY. [ARTICLE]

CALAMITY AND CHARITY.

[Extract, from a Recent Hermon, by Prof. Swing, of Ohioago.] Therefore all thing, whatsoever ye would that men should do to yon, do ye even so to them.— Matt. vll:m. Let me ask you to-day to mark how brilliantly tho Golden Rule shines forth from the background of calamity. Like the rainbow colors made vivid by the rain-cloud, the words of Christ become . brilliant in the darkness of human ilk When all are happy and flourishing, the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have others do to you,” lies dormant, like a plant resting under snow, but when men and women run to and fro with tears and entreaties, then the dead plant awakes and puts forth its leaves, as though human suffering were its spring-time. The most valuable compensation the human race now possesses, in return for tho tears it has shed, nrast be found in the humane feelings which have been left behind by those tears. * * * There are two ideas which outrank all others—tho one that God is our Father, the other that man is our brother; and, as it is confessed by most thinkers that society cannot exist without the faith in the Father, so may it be assumed that man can never reach a high civilization without cherishing deeply the sentiment that we are afi brethren. If the afflictions which at times oppress cities and Nations are steps in the growth of brotherhood and bfenevolencc, then, painful as the eause is, wo must be thankful for grand results. Calamity is a bitter root, whose flower and fruit are sweet. * * * Thus over all the wide reach of man’s history calamities are seen almost in the quantity of one for each generation; and, assuming, as we do, that our earth has a God, and that our God has intelligent purposes, we cannot but conclude that these ills are an element in the progress of the human soul. At the call of each of these appalling events, Kings and rulers, and all tho rich, and all the poor, have rushed to the help of the wounded, or sick, or helpless, or to the burial of the dead. Some ages have shown more cruelty or indifference, but all times and places have risen up in these hours to deeds of benevolence and heroism. It has been said that an epidemic is the “ battle-field of the physician,” and only the coward flies; but it is equally the battle-field of charity, antj as here medical science wins Its victory, so here charity wins her fame. Under the flag of a Howard Association working in the South ninety days, the genius orChrist can become moVe widely and deeply known than it could be learned in many times ninety days from ordinary pulpit presentations. In its agony tho heart perceives the deepest truth. If the forms of civilization are affected, as all confess, by mountains, or seas, or prairies, they must bo affected by the impressive moral scene through which man is marching. What will make you weep for pity will make others weep, and has done so, and lienee the millions of the past have emerged from the touching scenes around them with softer hearts. A men known in an old English register as Farmer Keld, left orders that the pomp of his funeral should take the form of a charity, and on that day presents should be given from his property to a thousand poor. But what may have awakened so kind a wishP He must have fortified liis mind by the pathetic in history. He read not only the page of military success, but the recoras of plague ana storm. He knew by heart all the dark pages as well as the bright ones. In his school-books he had seen a hundred thousand persons die of plague in London —IO,OOO in one week m August, and that, too, when London was not as populous as to-day. The grass grew in the once busy streets. Ho had lived in those days when the Carts drove along the silent streets after night, the drivers pausing here and there to sing forth, “ Bring out your dead.” Silentiy doom would open and the arms of affection would cast into a common cart the body of parent £r child. There was no time for cofllns nd no room for separate graves. In the year following, the London fire made homeless 50,000 whom the fever had spared. This, in a city not larger than our Philadelphia, might well help make those living in that epoch to turn their money into kindness. Waiving all pretense to a knowledge of what may have moved Farmer Keld, it is perfectly evident that tne hours of human suffering are the vital breath of public charity. They feed the sentiment so tljat it becomes able to enter each home and sweeten all the language and oonduot of the domestic hearth. Tho one spectacle which relieves tho gloom of him who looks Southward to-day and sees the cities prostrated by a plague is that help pouring in front all tho happy and well citios waked up to deeds of benevolence. More impressive than the picture of the summer harvest or the autumn fruits is this picture of a wide land coming to the help of the afflicted and'responding to the Divine words, “What ye would others should do toward you do ye toward them.” It-has required long and,varied misfortune to build up in the human mind such a sublime principle; but if wisdom and universal love must pome by such _ a means, then let us feel that they are

cheap even at that great cost If painful facta laarro behind them noble truth*, then let ** accept of the painful foot*. We outy regret that charity could not have oame into the world fay some other gate; but let ua forget the means, and be glad she has oome and is ever more ana more coming.

That sentiment which we perceive so active to-day in all the towns and oitios he* always been deemed one of the noblest attribute* of man. The beauty es face and form; oven the beauty of KOiiu, has boom lefts admired than the auty of benevolence. To look bick and see this quality of tho soul sending forth it* roots and brandies deeper ana wider, awaken* more gratitude to God than cemes from any survey of the development of the arts. Hear old Juvenal say that “ Sympathy for all his follows distinguishes man from the brute.” When Terence made his drama proclaim the sentiment, “ I am a mad, and hence all human welfare is dear to me,” it is said the theater rang with applause. In the Moaaio law, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbor,” and in Menander, and Plato, add Cicero—all through Grecian, and Roman, and Persian literature—the law of reciprocity is before mankind waiting to be fully enacted. Quintilian said, “Give bread to a stranger id the name of the universal brotherhood, which binds all men into one family under the common Father of Nature.” If such a shape of human development could have oome only by the way of public and private misfortune, then let us feel that our griefs are not without some reward. If, on aocount of human calamity, Christ oame, and but for our moral troubles would not have come, we may not indeed be glad over man’s awful depravity, but we might be thankful that earth was just dark enough to draw that divine one into it To compensate for the picture of evil, we have that picture of moral greatness. The advent of Jesus makes man’s sorrow a blessing. It is a great mystery that from our many-shaped troubles a many-shaped virtue should spring. But that such is the truth an old Persian poet perceived many centuries ago. Hundreds of years since a Persian dreamer saw the relations of suffering to spiritual education, and in all the witchery of poetry sang: I sometime* think that never blow, so red The rose aa where some buried Cseaar bled; That every hyacinth the garden wear. Dropt in Her lap from some once lovely head. When this poet saw springing up where the crucifixion had been those early and lovely flowers he saw what all history confirms, that the hyacinth we call "benevolence has grown well where some noble one has died in the human garden. We are permitted by these words of Christ, ana by this law of reciprocity, to view this matter of calamity in another light. It is not selfishness, but it is wisdom, and humanity, and dependence combined, when man feels that he may himself some day need the sympathy of others. The words, “Do to others as you would ifltve others do to yon,” conceal within them the idea that you and I are not above the reach of misfortune. They whisper to us that there are unread dark pages in our future. In pur old school-books there was a story of a widow in a lonely cabin, on some shore, who never turned hungry away the shipwrecked sailor. From year to year she kept her light burning, and some food prepared for anyone treated harshly by the ocean. The key to her conduct was that she had an only son on the sea. He had been absent for years, and she was doing to others as she hoped others would do for that son, shsuld he upon any stormy night be cast upon a desolate shore. Goa and the whole universe allow some thought of self to live and flourish in the heart. We may all help all the plague-stricken cities, partly because we and our children are not invulnerable, but are all on the path of some public or private sorrow. Our city, which to-day seems so happy, fanned by pure healthful winds from thousands of square miles of pure water and sweet grass, possesses no immunity against misfortune. It is not the less possible because not to be seen. The industry and science of to-day are battling against pestilence with some success, but the demons of the air cannot all be exorcised and slain. Cold air has not always been a security, for these pestilences have come in as high latitude as New York and London. Map’s art and toil can do much, but they* will never rob Nature of her store of calamities. I recall now other powers of the air and earth. IM-811 a traveler upon one of the first steamboats on the Western waters wrote that after reaching the Mississippi the water beneath the boat became troubled; ominous sounds were heard; the sky wore an unnatural- hue; the persons at the landings seemed terrified. But yoii all know the story. For days and weeks the earth trembled, and a district almost as large as the State of Massachusetts sunk until what was once a beautiful land covered with farms and villages became a dead lake, and is now called the Sunken Country. All along the St. Lawrence and our lakes these earthquake chariots have rumbled. In what shape calamities will come we know not. They hide their forms that they may create a more perfect consternation. This we know, that the Author of Nature permits no generation to come and go without having seen some of these fearful tumults of society. The Golden Rule, therefore, finds its warrant not only in the past, not only in the present, but also in the hidden mystery of to-morrow. Yon aro ail to open your hand toward our South, not only btaeause itia a present right and duty, but because of that uncertain to-morrow to wkioh we go and further still into which we shall send our beloved children. Storms await ns all in home, and city, and Stnto, and for thoso dark days the law of reciprocity is a noble preparation. The lessons of the morning are thus manifest. We must pause in our courses, however successful they may be, and in onr pleasure, however long and loud, to read the darker page of other lives. We must read the record of New Orleans, and Grenada, and Memphis as though we as well as Terence were human and were indifferent to no bumur interest We mast never dose the book of human life because our page, portrait, or biography is not there, but we must keep it open, and hang with delight or sympathy over the great page of man | We must read in themodern ills, and in the oharity which of late years has become so great, a comment upon the intrinsic worth of Christ’s life and philosophy. In the closets of the philosopher and the shops of the chemist, the internal value of tne Christian religion may fall to appear. It may eseapo detection by these forms of logic, but passing out in actual life and viewing a Protestant clergyman or a Roman priest, a Protestant woman or a Sister ,of Cbwrlty, dying in the office of a

faithful nurse, we must, all easily find there a proof that Christ did come hate our world upoh a mission the most divine. When soianoe and logic are silent or cold, let heroism apeak. A lesson, too, to this purport we may find, that both the past ana the unread morrow command us to include in our daily survey of man not only his acts and triumphs but his great misfortunes, and by as much as tne nineteenth century dazzles us and makes us proud by its marvels, by so much may its misfortimes, its blighted fortunes and death-ruined homes soften our hearts. May we all grasp, not only the world’s pleasures but also its pains, not onfy admire its fashions, its art, its splendor, and pass to and fro amid its pomp and revelry, but equally let us count the tears that have long washed the human cheek. Let us not be mere children of appetite and all passion, bat children of agreat God and a great Christ, and the tender ohildren of a human race which comes into life weeping and passes out by a grave.