TH THE POWER OF RIGHT. BY PROFESSOR B. H. NADAL. HE other prominent trait in a strong character is the power of calm reflection, especially in seasons of danger, or prevalent excitement. "Who wickedly is wise or madly brave, Is but the more a fool, the more a knave." The ferment of the passions forbids reflection and urges on headlong, we know not whither; mere expediency reflects, but only so far as may be needful to secure some selfish end, and this selfishness of the end disturbs and distorts reflection as surely as the rage of passion prevents it. In neither case has the mind a resting-place, an abiding principle, from which to start, and to which to recur in time of perplexity and doubt. In the one instance the ship is driven before the storm without regard to rudder or compass, in the other she obeys the helm, but the helm is not under the control of the needle; in both instances anchorage in the wrong harbor or shipwreck is the sure end of the voyage. But where the power of passion has been withstood and finally conquered; where expediency has been shown to an inferior place, and right has risen to royal dignity in the soul, there is the power of calm reflection, and haste and confusion never enter. The sense of right has given dignity and weight to the mind; undisturbed by conscience, a stranger to fear, the master of excitement, his mental processes go on placidly and consecutively in spite of the rage and the threats of his enemies. Such is his estimation and reverence of right; of such transcendent importance does he feel it to be, that when there is doubt concerning the best means of promoting it, he deliberates earnestly, not indeed whether he shall adopt measures of doubtful rectitude-do evil that good may come, but which, among many lawful means will be most conducive to the end. This power of calm reflection is essential to the highest efficiency of every other attribute of the soul, especially to that of courage. No truly great or strong character can possibly exist without it. It is the element needed to give consistency even to an honest heart; in the absence of which the life is wasted in sporadic impulses and bungling performances, and without which courage degenerates into fury, and the character, instead of a stately and well-proportioned temple, becomes an irregular edifice, with no cement to hold together its loose and repellant blocks. In the great battle for truth and right courage may be the weight and sharpness of the weapon and the force of the blow, but the power of calm reflection is the temper of the steel and the sureness of the aim. The second general thought is, that the power of right is seen in its adaptation to be dominant in every sphere of life, and, indeed, in every part of the universe. Being, as we are acquainted with it, rises before the mind as a climax; the lowest stratum is unorganized matter, then vegetable life, then animal, then rational; and the highest point of rational life, as of the whole climax of being, is the moral, to which right has its nearest-its immediate relations. Indeed, the primary purpose of the universe seems manifestly moral. "The heavens declare the glory of God," to excite us to adoring admiration; the lilies of the field exhibit their gentle beauty and scatter their fragrance, to exercise us in filial trust; showers and sunshine, seed time and harvest are meant to awaken our gratitude; the lives of good men are intended to influence our hearts and souls with the love of moral beauty, and those of bad men to awaken our disgust at wrong. Every thing, both within and without, whether it speaks in dimly-understood hieroglyphics, or in the soul's own vernacular, seems to address the intellect mainly for moral purposes, and right is the normal condition of all moral being. But let us exhibit our idea in the light of a broader view of morality. We are familiar with two expressions of morality, the law of God and the human conscience; the one perfect from the nature of its source, the other, in our fallen condition, imperfect and needing to be supplemented by the first. The moral law is the law of laws: it dwells eternally in the infinite mind, and constitutes the mode and spirit of every divine act. In a very important sense it is the only law: there are many ingenious civil codes; there are political systems of wide extent and great influence; there are rules of social life, plans of domestic government, and forms of individual discipline, but they impose obligation no farther than they agree with the moral law-this is the light which permeates them, the salt which preserves them, and the cord with which alone they can be bound upon the souls of men. What we have said of the moral law among laws, may, to a great extent, be said of the moral faculty among the faculties of the soul: it is dictator and supreme judge, every rejection of whose decisions, every violation of whose commands is to be chastised with a whip of scorpions. The moral law, then, is the supreme rule for the universe, as the conscience is the supreme tribunal for the soul, and in proportion as this rule governs the conscience, and the instructed conscience governs the man, and the man so governed becomes the type, not merely of what society ought to be, but of what society is, the world is advancing toward the perfection of heaven, and men toward the power of angels. This adaptation of right to rule is further illustrated by the sufferings of the wicked. The pangs of a guilty conscience derive all their pungency from the infliction being right, and it will be by the authority of right that the woes of perdition will be administered and perpetuated. The adaptation of right to the position of universal authority is thus placed beyond question. It is the great generic idea of the universe, under which the categories of all true philosophy must be ranged. In Jehovah it is unoriginated and perfect, and is echoed back to him from all the noblest portions of his creation. In the unfallen | angels it exists in glorious miniature; in man the miniature is doubtless minified, as it certainly is greatly defaced; but still the word and Spirit of God, shining upon it, may restore the blurred and distorted lineaments; in the angels that kept not their first estates, as well as in lost human souls, it exists only as an avenging viceroy in a revolted province, whose office it is to condemn and punish. Right is to the spiritual what gravity is to the physical universe: the globes of light that float in space around some unknown center, advance as a glorious host-a moving orchestra unnumbered and innumerable-each keeping its place and striking its own note in the grand symphony of universal providence. Some of these worlds are, no doubt, places of darkness and deformity too horrible to be dwelt on; still they circle in their orbits, and the tones they send forth, though discord in themselves, may be taken up and so modified by the influence of the whole as to contribute to the general harmony. Thus also is it with the spiritual universe. Right is full sphered in God-the great central sun-wherever right is found it acknowledges his attraction and swells the general harmony. The natures in whom right is dominant give forth direct harmony in all their spheres, while those who have resisted it, and with whom it is an opposing and yet necessary element, utter the discords which, being modified, increase the glory of the song. "The wrath of man shall praise the Lord." Another source of the power of right, and the highest of all, is the presence and direct co-operation of God. We have already seen the ennobling influence of a conviction of the Divine approval-the power of the belief that in adhering to right we are pleasing God; how it dispels fear and arms the soul; now, however, we call attention, not to the idea but to the thing; not to the power of the simple persuasion of the presence of God, but to his actual presence and power in the soul. This is a doctrine of Christianity, and, indeed, of all religions. The priestess on the tripod professed to utter her responses as dictated by the god; Socrates claimed to have been guided from his childhood, in all the important affairs of life, by some divinity; Mohammed claimed inspiration; and the Brahmin holds communion with Brahm till the adorer and the adored become one. These are the testimonies of false religions to the true doctrine, whose genuine form and authentic facts are to be found only in the Old and New Testaments. But the inspiration of prophets and apostles was infallible, and its result an enduring revelation-we are using the word in a lower sense; in that, namely, in which, according to Christianity, every good man may be said to be inspired. God himself moves mightily in the soul of the champion of right-the inspiration of his ideas finds its objective complement in the efficient agency of the Holy Ghost. Infinite Wisdom illumines the finite intelligence, the Divine essence stirs the human mind, quickening its perceptions, lifting the vail more and more from truth, so that newly disclosed charms may increase the celestial longing, exhibiting ever more and more clearly the hatefulness of falsehood and deception, and the weakness of sin and error, with all their boasting, and showing that the might of right consists, not merely in right ideas, a noble character, and its adaptation to govern in the universe of thought and action, but most of all and finally in the august, personal presence of God in the soul, marshaling, presenting, energizing the ideas-touching the very essence of the feeble but willing spirit with the blazing finger that made Isaiah's lips to sing, and saying, "Lo, this hath touched thee;" for thy devotion to right, I have given thee power and made thee a dispenser of light to man. Such a man was Paul before Agrippa, bold and strong in his chains; such a man was Luther before imperial and Papal power at Worms, with unblanched cheek refusing to recant and demanding to be refuted out of the holy Scriptures; such were Wickliff and Huss, and many othersmen who enlightened and reformed the world, first by the blaze of their sanctified genius, and then by the flames of their martyrdom. We will conclude by briefly noticing some of the manifestations of this power. Right, in the abstract, as we have seen, is of a nature to become powerful; right, in the concrete, is already powerful. When truth, especially moral and religious truth, is found by a receptive and eager seeker, it is no longer merely abstract, but is associated with the energies of a human soul; it enters the arena of mundane conflict with this man as its champion; its manifestation depends on him and his power on it. This very entering of right into the soul; this clothing of the principle with living forces, by which right from being abstract becomes concrete, is itself the very power we have been discussing the soul is vitalized by right, and right, to indulge a para- | dox, is embodied in the soul. The soul wanted power, right wanted instruments, and the result of the union is, as we have seen, a powerful character, aided by boundless adaptations, and direct, divine co-operation. The manifestations we inquire for must, therefore, be the results of this character, aided as we have seen. favored with an ordinary share of talents, rejoices in the existence of something in the world and in himself, infinitely superior to wealth or genius, or even his own person; something to which all these were intended to be subservient. He deeply pities "the poor man that hangs on princes' favors," as also him whose whole life is an exploration of the earth for gold. Riches and poverty, fame and obscurity are non-essential circumstances, that may or may not be appendages of right. "He fixes good on good alone, and owes To virtue every triumph that he knows." To him real failure is impossible; for though violence and wrong may win the day and triumph every-where else, his soul is still victorious and mighty in its unawed, unsubdued allegiance, and if he falls he falls a blessed martyr, Like Wordsworth's happy warrior, if "Doomed to go in company with pain, And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train! * Finds comfort in himself and in his cause; And, while the mortal mist is gath'ring, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause." Another effect of this power is seen in the manner in which a certain class of practical dif ficulties disappears before rectitude of purpose. You find yourself hemmed in on every side, and your soul is sore amazed; taking counsel of your fears you are ready to despair, for the darkness may be felt, or, at least, there is no light except upon some forbidden path. But bethink thee; if thou canst not see, canst thou not feel? feel right within thee, and, strong in thy honest purpose, wait in the dark till right shall show the true way? For only let a man resolve to do And, first, what are these manifestations in the individual soul? One is, that the man in his noble aims, in his artless simplicity-keeping company only with the purest thoughts and using his faculties for none but righteous purposesgrows into such dignity and excellence as to be entirely beyond the control of circumstances, no matter how flattering or adverse. How miserable is the man whose highest desires are satisfied by wealth; over whose face and heart the fluctuations of the market can spread the deepest gloom or the highest joy; who only lives under the fickle smile of Fortune, and wilts and expires under her frown; who finds within the whole range of his personality nothing to control his avarice-no principle superior to the passion for self! Or look at the man of mere genius, who knows nothing, in all the wide range of his thoughts, nobler or better than his own powers: if poetry is his sphere, his muse, sordid as brill-right at all hazards, and a light will be kindled iant, chants in sublimest strains the praise of royal babies, the victories of a tyrant's armies, or the glories of a reign signalized only by violence and blood. He considers the faculty divine an article of trade and fairly disposed of when sold to the highest bidder; he has one eye, and that the weakest, on glory, and the other on his pension; so that with powers for which the whole world scarcely affords sufficient scope, he is like the little boy in the nursery song, who "sung for his supper." But the man possessing the character formed by right, in the sense in which we have been treating it, whether gifted with genius or merely in his soul which will solve, slowly, perhaps, but A MIDSHIPMAN'S ADVENTURE WITH A BABY. THE period the event I am about to relate occurred. Reasons of delicacy, however, prevent me from gratifying even so reasonable a desire; and I will only say, that the harrowing circumstance took place in the summer of a certain year, between the time of the arrival of the first bear at the Zoological Gardens in London and the present day. I had been a midshipman on board the wellknown ship named after His Majesty King Wil liam the Fourth; but receiving letters from home announcing my father's death, I had just returned to this country to take possession, as well as a minor could, of the family estate. I was not very well acquainted with the world-except the liquid part of it-having been brought up in a country town, and shipped in boyhood; but to make up for that, I had an excellent opinion of myself, and watched both with pride and anxiety the sprouting of what I conceived to be a very promising mustache. cursor of peace, and from being the butcherknife of royal assassins become the honored, though dreadful instrument of liberty and right. Now, however, the world is witnessing the inauguration of a new period. Right resisted wrong with the instruments of slaughter, because they were the only available arguments; but the tactics are changing, the voice of reason is beginning to be potent, arguments are becoming more powerful than blows, the pen mightier than the spear, and the scene of the conflict is changing from the field of carnage to the college, the pulpit, the press, the seats of the world's deliberative assemblies, nay, even to the log schoolhouse, with its backless benches, and to the very hearthstone of the rudest hut in the land. No reader of these lines, of whatever age or sex, will be able to shun this conflict: they must battle on one side or the other-which shall it be? and in what manner and spirit will you conduct the strife? Will you, reader, stand up in the vast army of the good, an earnest, even though feeble, defender of right? Will you resolve, with a purpose that no power can shake, that neither the glare of wealth, nor the deceitfulness of power, nor the thirst of fame, nor the appetite for pleasure, nor devotion to party, nor theological Gardens, when I saw, in the path leadinfluence of sect, nor the strong bias of friendship, nor even the love of life itself, shall tempt you, for one moment, to desert the right? Reject every base motive, and all low and deceitful management, even though they should appear to be the only path to preferment. Deal truthfully with truth as well as with error, and let it not satisfy you merely to have truth on your siderather, as a great living author has said, be always sure to be on the side of truth. Love and cherish the right. When the multitude follows in her train despise not the tumultuous joy, but join the crowd, and, with the rest, spread your garments in her path and aid in raising the loud hosanna! But, when all men desert her, and you find yourself the only worshiper at her shrine, then let your soul be stirred to a deeper devotion to her honor and a higher enthusiasm for her advancement. With such a character you shall be only a little lower than the angels. ALL self-complacency is excluded in the experience of holiness. However deep our peace, however freely justified and uncondemned we stand beneath the cross, abasement before God is the attitude of the soul praising the grace which saves to the uttermost. One evening, after getting myself into full tog, I was displaying my horsemanship near the Zo ing to the entrance, one of the loveliest women that ever appeared to the eyes of an ex-reefer. What was that to me? I do not know. It was a thing completely settled in my mind, that I was a full-grown man, and that a full-grown man has a right to look at any woman. In short, I dismounted, gave my horse to the groom, and followed my divinity. A little girl was behind her, walking with the nurse-maid, who had another child, an infant, in her arms; and to my great satisfaction, this careless servant put the baby presently into the arms of the older girl, not much bigger than itself. I watched the proceeding, saw the little creature, whose walk was but a totter at the best, swaying to and fro under her burden, and the baby's long clothes trailing on the ground. "Madam," said I to the lady, touching my hat in quarter-deck fashion, "that baby, I fear, is in dangerous hands: you are perhaps not aware of it?" She turned round instantly. It was what I wanted, but the flash I received from her beautiful eyes had a world of haughtiness in it; and although she bent her head slightly, and said: "Sir, I thank you," I did not dare to continue the conversation, but walked rapidly on. In fact, it was obvious the woman thought I had taken an unwarrantable liberty with her arrangements; and as when turning away I caught a smile at my discomfiture on the face of the nurse-ity a lifeless corpse. And presently I could not maid, who snatched the baby roughly away, in- look, for the exigences of my own position dedignation mingled with my awkwardness. Who was this lady? Was she the mother of the two children? Was she the governness? Was she a relation? Was she single, or married? She was single; she was the mother's sister: I decided upon that. And, after all, was her haughty look so very reprehensible? Had she not been addressed suddenly by a stranger, and that stranger a man-a man of somewhat distingue figure, and most promising mustaches? I relented; and as I saw her enter the Gardens my heart gave a great leap, for I considered it uncommonly likely that a lion would break loose, or something or other occur to draw forth my chivalry, and extort her gratitude. I was not in error in my anticipations; although the circumstance that did occur was too wild even for an imagination like mine. Had it come suddenly, I almost think I should have shut my eyes, held my breath, and stood still: but as it was, I had no time to reflect; the uppermost idea in my mind was, that I would do something heroic, something desperate; and when opportunity offered, I instantaneously did it. The party, with many others, were looking over the inclosure at the bear on his pole; and in order that all might see, the nurse-maid had the little girl in her arms, while the little girl had the baby in hers. This arrangement was not very reprehensible, as a momentary freak, for the maid of course had good hold of both the children, the elder of whom was jumping with glee; and my attention, therefore, was exclusively directed to the lady, who stood absorbed in the spectacle before me. All on a sudden, there was a scream from the little girl-the unfortunate baby was over the inclosure, and lying senseless on its face in the area-and the gigantic bear was descending the pole to secure his prey. To climb the inclosure and spring into the area, did not take me many moments-but it took me too many. I was at a little distance from the spot, and before I reached it the bear had caught up the infant, whose little face was buried in its fur; and on my approach made for the pole, and began to ascend with great rapidity. I followed, without giving myself time for a moment's reflection, and while I climbed caught hold of the long clothes of the baby. The action was well intended; but the consequences were dreadful-perhaps fatal; for the bear loosed his hold, and the poor little thing fell to the ground. I began mechanically to descend; but did not dare to look at what was in all probabil manded my every thought. The bear above was descending with huge strides and angry growls, and another below-a great black monster, of whose presence in the inclosure I had not been aware-was shambling along to the support of his comrade, and had already almost reached the pole. The fix was terrible, but it lasted only an instant; for the keeper now made his appearance, and with a few hearty wallops sent the black bear to the right about, while my pursuer stopped short with a terrific growl. "What are you doing here?" cried the keeper, as I staggered upon the ground. "I must give you in charge to the police for a lunatic!" "Never mind me,” said I faintly; "look to the child, for I dare not." "The child!-what child?" "Are you blind? There!" and I forced my eyes upon the hideous spectacle. The creature's head was off! It was wax! I hardly know how I got over the inclosure. A sound of laughter was in my brain, as if I was made of ears, and every ear ringing its loudest. The nurse-maid enjoyed the adventure more than any body, but the little girl in her arms clutched at me furiously, as if charging me with the murder of her doll, and was not pacified till the fragments of that sickening baby were handed to her over my shoulder. I darted away; and it was high time to do so, for all the company in the Gardens were rushing to the spot. The fair cause of the mischief was standing a little way off, leaning on the arm of a tall, noblelooking man, with mustaches ten times as big as mine. She seemed choking between recent alarm and present mirth; and as I passed: "Sir," said she, with swelling cheeks and unsteady voice, "my husband wishes to thank you for our little girl's doll!" But I was off like a shot, without waiting even to touch my hat; and thankful I was to get out of the gate, for many of the spectators followed mechanically. It would be vain to attempt to describe my reflections as I sped rapidly along. But in the midst of all I knew what was before me-I had an intense consciousness of what was to be done. My resolve was fixed, and I felt an insane joy at the idea that no possible intervention could prevent me from executing it. As soon as I reached home, I went straight to my own room, locked and bolted myself in, sat deliberately down before the glass, drew forth my razor, and-shaved off my mustaches.-Chambers's Journal. |