XV.

PAST AND PRESENT.

"SAY not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."-ECCL. 7: 10.

We do not inquire wisely when we speak thus of our former days; first, because the change is not in the times, but in ourselves. We see them from a different point of view. We do not judge them now, smarting under the pruner's knife, but in the soft light of memory, in the pure spaces of thought, and we are able to see that the discipline of those days had special reference to the happiness and success of these. All that we say of childhood was true of it, and all that old age says of maturity is true of it; but we did not see it so at the time. These lights were indeed in our sky, while we were under their meridian ray; but the sun of ambition was up, and the earth was full of its gairish light, and we saw them not. Now, as the sun descends and the twilight steals upon the distant east, and the air grows clear and still, we see that our sky was full of stars. And we do not inquire wisely, secondly, because we do not learn the right lesson from the facts. When we first discover that the past was a good time, that childhood was full of joy, and youth and manhood full of blessedness which is now passed away, we are impatient and gloomy, and faithless about the present. We wish the old times would come again. Whereas, it should teach the very opposite lesson.

It should teach us that somewhere in the present, in some unsearched nook or corner, are all the elements of the "golden age;" that if we are disappointed in our onward. pursuit, it is only that we may look about us more closely for things which we were overlooking in our haste. But even if no such explanation of our present trial is found, the very fact that the former times seem better than these, should teach us to have faith that, when the smart of this hour's trial is over, we shall look upon it from the future and see its meaning. Instead of making us impatient and gloomy, it should make us patient, and courageous, and hopeful. When the present time seems hard to you, ask yourself, What have I missed? What can I find in the darkness of adversity which I did not see in the light of success?

And why, in like manner, does a nation inquire unwisely, when it cries, The former times were better than these? Because it is not true of any live nation; it is a trick of the imagination or a false sentimentalism. The moment any object of thought is removed from the correction of fact and present reality, imagination begins to play her magic games. Just in proportion as a better criticism corrects the judgment of the past, in that proportion do we find that those times were far behind these in interest and promise. What was that golden time which the English are so fond of praising? It was a time when the best establishments of the island did not live so well as most of our day-laborers live; when the students of Cambridge dined on a farthing's worth of beef, a little salt and oatmeal, and nothing else; when the king himself did not get such good medical advice and treatment as the poorest man of our city can get for nothing. It was the time of the sweating-sickness and the plague; a time when the northern counties were the theatre of constant

robberies, murders, conflagrations, and violence of all sorts; a time when a capricious queen was sole guide of church discipline; when the jails were filled with men like Coverdale, Johnson, and Wentworth, guilty of nothing but pure morals and doubts of the queen's infallibility; when the court was ruled by libertines like Leicester, and the church by bigots like Cranmer; when more than seventy-two thousand persons suffered death in a single reign at the hands of the executioner. This was the age of Good Queen Bess! Did the people who lived in it feel that it was a golden one? Alas! how little do we realize what that time was to those pure, earnest men who loved freedom and truth more than the favor of princes. How lonely in the swarms of men! What prisoners to their great thoughts! How poor they were! How their wives and children suffered! How they trembled, strong men as they were, when asked to choose whether they would give up their deepest sense of truth and right, and have a competence, or cleave to them, and see their loved ones turned into the streets, friendless and penniless! Did they think their times good? I think not. But we look back upon that great endurance as merely the shadow in a grand picture, a reverse in a novel of whose dénouement we have no doubt, because we see that it was out of such misery that the phoenix of Puritanism sprang; that it was such oppression which freighted the Mayflower, and through such agony a new world was born; and the greatness of the result sheds its lustre backward upon the suffering which Queen Bess produced, and glorifies each scene of grief and heart-sickness. As we look from this hour into Robert Johnson's pent-up cell, it widens beyond the circle of the stars, and all great spirits of the past greet him as their peer; but no thanks to the times.

Neither was our own Revolution a better time than this. It was a time that tried men's souls. It was a time of division, and petty jealousies, and mean motives, and adverse fortunes. Congress was jealous of Washington, and Hancock was jealous of Washington, and Lee was jealous of Washington. The people would not provide for the army, and the army could not fight for the people. Reverse followed reverse, retreat followed retreat. Friends deserted, and turned traitors and spies. The feeble colonies were sprinkled over with Tories in communion with the enemy. Men who are halting between two opinions in their country's distress now, think there is no doubt where they would have been in the Revolution. And, indeed, there is no doubt our peace-men would have been Tories; and our Northern men of Southern principles would have been traitors, and some of our newspapers would have opposed Washington ; others would have excused General Arnold, and so on. There were no magic charms about those days which raised men above the influence of selfish motives. They went into that war step by step, as necessity compelled, and declared themselves free and independent at last as a military necessity, no greater than that which seems to call for the emancipation of our enemies' slaves to-day. There were no braver men, nor more heroic women, then than now. Men leave their plows in the furrow, their hammers on the anvil, now as they did in the Revolution, and from as pure motives. I make no comparison now of the material changes which this age has witnessed, and of which it reaps the advantage. I speak of time as God's discipline of men and nations, and as such all time is precious, but every present time the most precious of all. I protest against this habit of attributing all great achievements to some ripeness of time, because in reality

heroism and heroes are the same always and in all times. It is easy enough to see and admire heroism in people who brave public sentiment for truth's sake, provided always that they are so far from us in time or place that our sympathy will not bring us into odium. Men will worship the heroes of history, or of Italy, at the same time they are building fires for the prophets and martyrs of to-day. The man who as governor of Massachusetts ordered Garrison's paper suppressed as a nuisance, because it advocated the cause of the oppressed in this country, goes into raptures over Garibaldi, who went into Italy and made such sad havoc among the oppressors there.

There is nothing more hopeless nor helpless than that rose-water conservatism which will not touch the hem of a hero sweating in our own streets, but sighs for those delightful days when heroes wore silken hose and silver buckles, and hacked off kings' heads without losing favor at court, and resisted oppression while courting the oppressors' daughters, and liberated slaves without losing their masters' custom. There never were such times. Heroes have always been uncomfortable people for contemporaries to get along with. They have had one idea; and it would obtrude itself upon all occasions. They would shock their friends. They would get into the doctors' seats and dispute when mere boys. They would eat and talk with unanointed people. They would go into respectable places of worship with a whip of small cords. They would not deny the truth in Pilate's judgment-hall. They would not call a wrong right when nails were driven through their hands. And when torture had done its utmost, they would cry, "Thy will be done." Now, all these things are very pleasant to talk over after the poor, lonely man has risen, and appeared to