FullReads

It is amusing, by-the-bye, to see how the world changes its codes of respectability, and how, what is anathema in one generation, becomes trite orthodoxy in the next. The political sins in the work were, that “my brother had attacked the corn-laws with some severity; and I have attempted to level a battery against that sort of servile homage which the poor pay to the rich!”

There is no use pursuing the story much farther. They again save a little money, and need it; for the estate on which they have lived from childhood changing hands, they are, with their aged father, expelled from the dear old dog-kennel to find house-room where they can. Why not?–“it was not in the bond.” The house did not belong to them; nothing of it, at least, which could be specified in any known lease. True, there may have been associations: but what associations can men be expected to cultivate on fourteenpence a-day? So they must forth, with their two aged parents, and build with their own hands a new house elsewhere, having saved some thirty pounds from the sale of their writings. The house, as we understand, stands to this day–hereafter to become a sort of artisan’s caaba and pilgrim’s station, only second to Burns’s grave. That, at least, it will become, whenever the meaning of the words “worth” and “worship” shall become rightly understood among us.

For what are these men, if they are not heroes and saints? Not of the Popish sort, abject and effeminate, but of the true, human, evangelic sort, masculine and grand–like the figures in Raffaelle’s Cartoons compared with those of Fra Bartolomeo. Not from superstition, not from selfish prudence, but from devotion to their aged parents, and the righteous dread of dependence, they die voluntary celibates, although their writings show that they, too, could have loved as nobly as they did all other things. The extreme of endurance, self-restraint, of “conquest of the flesh,” outward as well as inward, is the life-long lot of these men; and they go through it. They have their share of injustice, tyranny, disappointment; one by one each bright boy’s dream of success and renown is scourged out of their minds, and sternly and lovingly their Father in heaven teaches them the lesson of all lessons. By what hours of misery and blank despair that faith was purchased, we can only guess; the simple strong men give us the result, but never dream of sitting down and analysing the process for the world’s amusement or their own glorification. We question, indeed, whether they could have told us; whether the mere fact of a man’s being able to dissect himself, in public or in private, is not proof-patent that he is no man, but only a shell of a man, with works inside, which can of course be exhibited and taken to pieces–a rather more difficult matter with flesh and blood. If we believe that God is educating, the when, the where, and the how are not only unimportant, but, considering who is the teacher, unfathomable to us, and it is enough to be able to believe with John Bethune that the Lord of all things is influencing us through all things; whether sacraments, or sabbaths, or sun-gleams, or showers–all things are ours, for all are His, and we are His, and He is ours–and for the rest, to say with the same John Bethune:

Oh God of glory! thou hast treasured up
For me my little portion of distress;
But with each draught–in every bitter cup
Thy hand hath mixed, to make its soreness less,
Some cordial drop, for which thy name I bless,
And offer up my mite of thankfulness.
Thou hast chastised my frame with dire disease,
Long, obdurate, and painful; and thy hand
Hath wrung cold sweat-drops from my brow; for these
I thank thee too. Though pangs at thy command
Have compassed me about, still, with the blow,
Patience sustained my soul amid its woe.