Introductory

The Ideal of Manhood

“The age of chivalry is gone!” calmly observe the calculating sophists, who lead the mind of the moderns, and persuade them that the world is hastening, under their influence, to a period of increased light and civilization,—a most convenient maxim to establish from the declamation of an orator! For that is as much as to hold, that there is no longer occasion for men to be generous and devoted, faithful and indifferent to their own selfish interest, full of high honor, not aiming to follow the erring multitude, but emulous of imitating the example and of joining the society of the celestial citizens: an assertion... characteristic of a class of men... with whom every age is gone but that of economists and calculators.

Kenelm Henry Digby.

That this book will be read by young men throughout the length and breadth of our land is a hope which its author must cherish fondly. For many years of his life he has labored in educating the youth of America; he would fain devote its crowning work to repair the errors committed in this apostleship of education. A long and comforting experience has also taught him how much there is in the hearts of American youth as well as in those of its ripest manhood, of most precious resources for the prosperity of their common country and the honor of their ancestral faith: how, then, can he help being encouraged and thrilled by the thought of aiding, in his measure, toward forming for the coming age the chivalrous patriots and the chivalrous Christians who are to enlighten and to save the world?

He would, then, ask every noble-hearted boy and every high-souled man who reads this page, to trust himself in the perusal of these chapters to the guidance of one who, in leading them through the ancient paths and placing the while before their eyes the illustrious examples of modern excellence, aims only at firing their souls with a holy ambition and an emulation fruitful in great deeds.

It is, in very truth, the love of excellence in all that can elevate man, perfect all the attributes of true manhood, and thereby increase a hundred-fold his power for good, that is inculcated throughout this book. Nor,—and we hasten to affirm it at the very outset,—is the ideal which is here held up for the imitation of both young and old, anything like the high standard of moral perfection, according to which the Christian Church for nineteen centuries has been wont to judge the virtues of those we call Saints.

Who are the True Men described here?

We are writing for men of the world, not for the apostolic men who have to keep alive and spread the Christian faith by their ministrations and example, nor for those who seclude themselves from the world to become Christlike by the practice of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Our instructions are intended to benefit laymen of all classes, as distinguished from the priest, the monk, or the hermit. Not that the manly virtues here inculcated and illustrated are not necessary to all those who believe in the dread responsibilities of human conduct and expect an eternal reward for the excellence required of all God’s servants,—but that the perfection demanded of religious orders and the consecrated ministers of God’s word, is higher in degree and differs in kind, in many respects, while the sterling qualities of heart and soul demanded of true men of the world are to be measured by the peculiar duties and exigencies of their worldly position.

Moreover, the True Men whom we have here before our mind’s eye,—and we have been blessed by acquaintance with many such,—combine in their lives so many heroic and Godlike features, that, although living in the turmoil of worldly affairs, they would be hailed as Saints by the holiest of priests or the most unworldly of ascetics.

The True Christian, the True Man

Our True Men, to be sure, we conceive to be, before and above all else, true Christians, sincere believers in Christ, and his earnest and devoted followers; men having at heart to practice the divine precepts for the love of their Divine Author, and the sake of the excellence such practice begets, much more even than for the honor such fidelity may win them; men true to God, to his truth, to themselves and their conscience, in every age of life, in every walk and rank of society, in every calling and trust, under every difficulty and trial and temptation.

It were, at best, ill taste and worse policy, in beginning a book of instruction, addressed to the men of our own time, to hint at present degeneracy, or to allow it to be thought of the model character we would hold up for admiration—

It shall be seen, before we have got through many chapters together, that, however we may deplore the spread of unbelief and scientific materialism in the nineteenth century, it is, nevertheless, most fruitful in the purest, the noblest, the best forms of heroic manhood, and even of Christian saintliness.

Comparisons of our own age, its institutions, tendencies, morals, and manners, with the past, could, just at present, only distract the mind from our real purpose. We have need only of all the inherited wealth of light and gracious helps which His fatherly providence has garnered for us, who is the Creator, the Governor, and ever-present Guide of humanity. Let us only look around us, count the magnificent advantages of our position on this point of time and space, and heartily endeavor to be true to ourselves, as He who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, wills us to be, and we shall not fail to be the True Men, whose deeds and achievements shall surely glorify our Father in heaven as well as our earthly country.

Excellences found in the Men of Our Day

Our true self, then, is what we are in God’s mind, what he wishes us to be in our day and generation, so as most to benefit the world amid which his design hath placed us. Let each man of us learn to be, and set himself manfully to be an

and we shall not only fill our place well in Church and State, but help to our utmost to make the present age hold a glorious place in the annals of the world.

No—the age of chivalry has not so utterly passed away, but that the spirit which animated the knightly institutions of old, still remains to inspire lofty aims, sentiments of the most exalted and self-denying generosity, and deeds of chivalrous daring and heroic self-sacrifice, as worthy of eternal remembrance as those that ever graced the lives of a Godfrey, a Tancred, or a St. Louis.

All this shall be made evident as we proceed. Meanwhile, however, lest our young readers should be led to think that we are going to propose for their imitation an excellence of impossible attainment, or virtues too far above the paths in which they must needs walk through life, we hasten to fix their attention on the twofold excellence of character and conduct, which is accessible to every man, from the peasant to the prince, from the boy just entering his teens to the octogenarian, from the general at the head of his army to the lowliest of those in the ranks;—accessible alike to the day-laborer, the tradesman, the lawyer, the magistrate, the physician of souls, as well as the physician of the body,—to the man most eminent in letters and science as well as to the man who is ignorant of the first elements of book knowledge.

Our True Man should be a Man of Great Character

As we are merely foreshadowing in this first chapter the most important features of our work, it may suffice to point out here the importance of character in itself and apart from conduct, and the vital necessity for parents of cultivating, developing, and molding strongly the character of their children from the very dawn of reason.

By character here we mean the firm habitual disposition to truthfulness, honor, integrity, generosity, and resolute energy of purpose, without which no man ever was or ever can be a true man. These qualities are formed in the child by the teaching and still more by the example of his parents.

Examples may best illustrate and impress our meaning on the willing mind.

Of a man who died in 1817, at the age of thirty-eight, and whose memory must ever be dear to Irish Catholics—Francis Horner—it was said by a contemporary that the Ten Commandments were stamped upon his countenance. “The valuable and peculiar light”—adds another of his countrymen—“in which his history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth, is this. He died... possessed of greater public influence than any other man; and admired, beloved, trusted, and deplored by all, except the heartless or the base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member. Now let every young man ask, how was this attained. By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth? Neither he, nor any of his relations, ever had a superfluous sixpence... By talents? His were not splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right... By what then was it? Merely by sense, industry, good principles, and a good heart, qualities which no well-constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force of his character that raised him; and this character not impressed upon him by nature, but formed out of no peculiarly fine elements by himself.”⁴4Lord Cockburn, as quoted by Samuel Smiles in “Self-Help,” pp. 332, 333.

The same author (Smiles) goes on to say: “Truthfulness, integrity, and goodness—qualities that hang not on any man’s breath—form the essence of manly character, or, as one of our old writers has it, that inbred loyalty unto Virtue which can serve her without a livery. He is strong to do good, strong to resist evil, and strong to bear up under difficulty and misfortune.”

“It was a first command and counsel of my earliest youth,”—says Lord Erskine,—“always to do what my conscience told me to be a duty, and to leave the consequence to God. I shall carry with me the memory, and I trust the practice, of this parental lesson to the grave. I have hitherto followed it, and I have no reason to complain that my obedience to it has been a temporal sacrifice. I have found it, on the contrary, the road to prosperity and wealth; and I shall point out the same road to my children for their pursuit.”

These examples from a Protestant source we have purposely placed first in order, that our Catholic readers may learn how carefully Providence preserves even in the lands which reject the authority of His Church, the precious home-virtues without which there can be neither true private worth nor lasting public prosperity. More than that, we are not to forget that civilized pagan nations, living under the Law of Nature, have always shown the same appreciation of noble manly character. All this should only shame Catholics, who boast the possession of the fullness of Revealed Truth, into the formation in their children and in themselves, of such perfect manly characters, as befit those who are, by their birthright, God’s adopted children here below.

The High Sentiment of Honor

“With our ancestors,”—says Digby,—“the Catholic religion was still the base, the pervading spirit, the vital principle of every virtue. From it flowed the high sentiment of honor, the fervor of heroism, the contempt for riches, the zeal of loyalty, the constancy of friendship.” And, speaking of honor, the bright crown of all manly character, the poet does but express the unanimous sentiment of all preceding Catholic generations, when he puts the following words into the mouth of a Duke of Norfolk:

Nor must what is here called honor be confounded with mere fame; there were and there are still many of the noblest souls, who are as careless of what men may think of them as they are jealous of the testimony of their own conscience and supremely anxious to stand well in the secret judgment of the All-Seeing.

“There is nothing that cannot be endured, save dishonor,” says the great St. Martin in the fourth century: “observe therefore your own actions, and do not be careless about them because they are hidden from the public eye: for it mattereth but little that none behold them, since you are a witness to them yourself.... It is the precious quality of a great soul, not to be vacillating, but ever consistent with one’s self, and fearlessly hopeful of the end of life.”⁶6Serm. I.

The Catholic Idea of Honor

The conception of honor with our forefathers was, therefore, what it should ever be with their descendants,—spotless integrity in the sight of God, much more even than an unstained reputation in the judgment of the world. The former is the sure foundation of the latter;—and it is chiefly about it that every true man should be concerned. If we are without reproach before our own conscience and in presence of God, there can be but little fear for our good name among men. Would that the men of our day could lay this truth to heart and impress it deeply on the souls of the succeeding generation! Then indeed might we hope, in this land of unbounded liberty for all good, the return of that age mentioned by the great Roman orator, “when men had for moral safeguard, not the boasting voice of the people, but elevation of character and spotlessness of conduct.”⁷7Pro A. Cluentio, 35. Cum homines se non jactatione populari, sed dignitate atque innocentia tuebantur; words that should be written in letters of gold in every place where laws are either made or administered.

Supreme and loving reverence for the Divine Majesty, and the filial fear of rendering one’s self displeasing to Him who is most faithful and true, such is the habitual sense in the Christian soul that helps to keep it free from every secret stain. It is “the fear of the Lord” under another name. And where it possesses thoroughly the heart of man, it is impossible that it should not preserve his outward life from voluntary stain. The purity and hardness of the diamond belong to the very first particles which unite at its heart’s core; the others which the mysterious laws of the Creator attract around these to increase and perfect the beauteous crystalline mass, must needs share the qualities of the former. The light which fills it, the perfect purity which gives even that light its highest value, belonged to the very heart of the gem. The most beautiful, the most manly, the most heroic characters in the esteem of a rightly judging world, are men whose hearts have never lost their primal purity, souls in whose very center the fire of God’s love lives unquenchably, and whose lives shine with undimmed and surpassing splendor, only because from childhood to the grave they “walked by His light in darkness.”⁸8Job, xxix. 3.

Pagan Conception of Honorable Youth

“Young people,” says Aristotle, “are not of corrupt manners, but are innocent from not having beheld much wickedness; and they are credulous from having been seldom deceived.... And they are easily put to shame, for they have no resources to set aside the precepts which they have learned; and they have lofty souls, for they have never been disgraced or brought low.... They prefer honor to advantage, virtue to expediency, for they live by affection rather than by reason; and reason is concerned with expediency, but affection with honor.... They are full of mercy, because they regard all men as good, and as more virtuous than they are themselves,—for they measure others by their own innocence; so that they suppose every man suffers wrongfully.”

Conception of it from the Old Testament

See how that most beautiful adamantine quality, formed in infancy and childhood by the joint action of the Divine Spirit and of motherly training, shines with unremitting luster in Samuel, perhaps the most perfect character in the Old Testament. True, his saintly mother, under divine guidance, had led the life of a Nazarite; nothing that could intoxicate passed her lips, and these lips were skilled in prayer. This was her chief delight. And this twofold spirit of prayer and heroic abstinence did she communicate to her God-given boy.

He was a life-long Nazarite, vowed to abstinence and consecrated to the divine service before his birth. A twofold passion swayed his entire existence,—absolute fidelity to the God of his fathers, and ardent devotion to the freedom and moral greatness of Israel. With his mother’s milk he drank in that absorbing love of the Divine Majesty which was the very soul of his life; the awful presence became from infancy to him a familiar reality, illuminating his whole career, like a sun that never sets. Toward the scarcely veiled face of the Lord the eye of Samuel,—child and youth, in obscure manhood and glorious old age,—was ever turned night and day; he, too, walked before God and was perfect.

These were the features of the child’s character, when his pious mother brought him to the Sanctuary at Shiloh, clothed in the long white linen robe her own hands had woven for him. And when, yearly, she wove and brought him another, the beautiful spiritual and manly character that unfolded itself, seemed as much the result of her pious nurture, as the robe which fitted his increasing stature was the loving work of her motherly hands.

Samuel,—child, prophet, liberator, judge of Israel, guide and intercessor of his people and their rulers,—offers, from first to last, a model of simple unwavering fidelity to God, to his own people, to conscience, and to honor.

Hearken to the touching dialogue that took place, when this model magistrate gave over, in presence of the assembled nation, his political authority into the hand of their chosen king.

“Samuel said to all Israel:... I am old and gray-headed;... having then conversed with you from my youth until this day, behold, here I am. Speak of me before the Lord and before his anointed, whether I have taken any man’s ox or ass, if I have wronged any man, if I have oppressed any man, if I have taken a bribe at any man’s hand: and I will despise it this day, and will restore it to you.”

“And they said: Thou hast not wronged us, nor oppressed us, nor taken aught at any man’s hand.”⁹91 Kings (1 Samuel), xii. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Modern Examples: St. Louis, King of France

From the spectacle of such a perfect character thus admired and praised by a whole nation, and held up in the Divine Book to the admiration of all succeeding ages, one reluctantly passes to mix with the rushing crowd along the paths of our daily life, as the half-rested traveler leaves the cool shade and the refreshing waters of an oasis to face once more the sand, the glare, the heat, and the oppressive solitude of the desert.

There is, however, an example nearer our own times of perfect virtue in a man of the world, which may well compare with the blameless and beneficent career of the great Hebrew prophet, without creating in the reader any fear of contemporary allusions.

How his Character was formed

Who does not know with what incomparable tenderness and solicitude the canonized Louis IX., King of France, was reared and educated by his mother, Blanche of Castile, deemed herself, by those who knew her best, to be worthy of a place among the saints? She had come of too heroic a blood not to value in her son the chivalrous virtues and qualities which should grace a Christian king. She saw to it during her regency, that he received an intellectual training quite extraordinary in an age when persons of high rank set but little store on literary attainments. Louis was an accomplished scholar and statesman, as well as a peerless knight and commander. What, however, distinguished him above all others, was his perfect Christian character. To form this in her boy, the God-fearing queen would intrust to no one but herself his instruction in the truths of religion, and his training to the practice of every virtue necessary to a Christian sovereign. “God knows, my son,” she would often say to him, as he nestled near her heart, while a mere child, or sat near her in boyhood, “God knows I love thee as well as ever mother loved her dearest. Yet would I rather see thee at any moment stretched a corpse at my feet, than know thee guilty of deadly sin.”

How the docile child retained through all his eventful and heroic life, the molding then given to his character, we shall have more than one occasion to judge ere the end of this book. And remembering in after-years all the pains taken for this purpose by his admirable parent, Louis was fain to bestow on his children the same loving labor. “Before he lay down in his bed,” relates his intimate friend and biographer, “he was wont to have his children brought to him, and related to them the actions of good kings and emperors, and told them to take example by such men. And he likewise set before them the deeds of bad princes, who had lost their kingdoms in consequence of their licentiousness, rapacity, and avarice. ‘I remind you of these things,’ he would say, ‘that you may keep your souls free from them, and draw not on yourselves the divine wrath.’ He also made them learn their prayers to Our Lady, and made them recite their Hours twice a day, to accustom them thereby to assist at the Hours (in the church), when they should have come to govern their own lands.”¹⁰10De Joinville, “Life of St. Louis, King of France,” ch. xv. The “Hours” spoken of here, are the Canonical Hours for the recitation of the divine office in cathedral or collegiate churches. It was then customary for all who could to assist at these, or to recite them in private from their “Book of Hours.”

Nor, in thus dwelling on the formation of character, and recalling again and again the qualities which enter into chivalry, do we for a moment wish it to be understood that our every word is not addressed to the popular masses much more than to those whom wealth, or birth, or position place at the head of the community. It is most especially the laboring classes in town and country that we are anxious to see “generous and devoted, faithful, and indifferent to their own selfish interest, full of high honor, and not aiming to follow the erring multitude.” The chivalry which is the very spirit of true Christian manhood, is not the character of a social class, or the distinctive quality of the highly born, or the result of the special training given to a privileged few. The generosity, the self-sacrificing heroism, which are its primary virtues, have ever been found in the poorest and lowliest, as well as in the foremost in rank and honor. “I can give you privileges and fiefs,” said a Christian emperor to a favorite who begged to be ennobled, “but I cannot make you noble.”

The nobility of soul, which we here hold up to your admiration, is the joint product of God’s grace and your own generous cooperation. Parents can and do contribute greatly toward the creation of this nobility of soul and conduct; it is, however, under God, the result of one’s own fidelity to the divine Voice ever speaking in conscience, to the divine Light ever showing steadily the path of duty and honor, and to the impulse of the Divine Spirit urging the babe of the beggar as well as the son of the prince to aim high, and do nobly, and be in all things true to the light and the truth within them.

How Character should shine forth in Conduct

“I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth, to recommend me; yet, if I live, I trust I shall not be of less service to mankind and my friends, than if I had been born with these advantages.”¹¹11Sir Humphry Davy. Thus spoke at the age of twenty a poor lad, who had been brought up in the shop of his father, a carver in wood, and who was, when he wrote these words in his private diary, a druggist’s apprentice. The world knows to what a height of pure fame he attained by dint of heroic labor; while the laborious life found its fittest and sweetest reward in the peace and blessing of the church of his fathers, which took the weary traveler to her embrace.

It is conduct, that manifests “the active doer, noble liver.” All man’s faculties, with God’s light in his mind and the mighty impulses of the Spirit ever moving his heart, are given him that he should do, that he should work, that the light of his life-work should go abroad to his fellow men, showing them how to live, to labor, to conquer! It is to enable him to work earnestly, to live nobly, to conquer surely in the strife with difficulty and hardship and temptation, that the mother’s loving nurture and wise training, the father’s example and sustaining friendship, are given to the child and the youth; and that, in manhood, the sympathy and encouragement of other noble workers are vouchsafed to him, as Jonathan was sent to David, to be his stay and his joy in dreadful trials.

Every Human Soul capable of High Culture

Let the young men whom these words may reach, bear in mind the old French proverb about farming, Tant vaut l’homme, tant vaut sa terre (“It is the man who makes the land”). Just as the richest soil is worthless in the hands of an ignorant or idle possessor, even so will the intelligent and industrious husbandman create a mine of gold out of the poorest soil. On our planet, to be sure, there are very many tracts that we may regard as incurably sterile, incapable alike of rewarding the labor of the plough or the toil of the miner. This cannot be said of human souls and the pregnant years of human life.

The mind and the heart of man, though born in a sheep-cot or the hut of a savage, are a soil capable of bearing a rich and an immortal harvest of Godlike virtues and merits. The years that fill even a brief life, are a mine of merit, richer and more unfailing than the gem-bearing fields of Brazil or Golconda, or the gold and silver laden chains of the Rocky Mountains.

Let every boy, let every youth lay to heart,—as he remembers the life-work appointed to him,—these dread words of the Holy Book: “Woe to them that are faint-hearted!... Woe to them that have lost patience!”...¹²12Ecclesiasticus, ii. 15, 16.

Do the work you have to do bravely and well. The disposition to seek to be perfect in everything one sets one’s hand to, to make the most of the task allotted for the present day and hour, is a divine instinct, which, if followed faithfully, will lead to certain eminence, to eminence in learning, in wealth, or in statesmanship; to eminence in art, in poetry, in eloquence, or in sanctity, according to one’s chosen sphere of labor.

Look forth upon the various walks of life, in Church or in State: you will find that the men most eminent and most honored in every profession and employment, are the men who have put their heart in their work; who have begun with the determination to do as did the great king of Juda, who “wrought that which was good and right, and truth before the Lord his God,... desiring to seek his God with all his heart; And He Did It and Prospered.”¹³13Paralipomenon (Chronicles), xxxi. 20, 21.

Create your Opportunities

Do not wait for opportunities. You would only resemble the stolid traveler in the fable, who, having come to a river which lay in his path, sat down on the bank till the waters had all flowed by. You would seek for a ferry, or make a raft on which to cross: God gives man invention to enable him to find resources against the difficulties toward his progress. The difficulty itself is oftentimes the most golden of opportunities. At any rate, men of resolute temper seek and find, or make their opportunities, just as the industrious husbandman often makes the very soil on which he grows his crops. Have you not seen one man prosper and grow rich on land on which its former possessor grew hopelessly and helplessly poorer year after year? Have you not seen many a stout-hearted farmer and his sons, with no capital but their courage, their perseverance, and the strong arms that served a resolute will, cover many a stony field with an abundant harvest, and convert an unsightly and unwholesome swamp into a rich meadow or a well-stocked pasture?

Nay, even as these lines are written under the inspiration of the lovely spring weather, yonder lie within view the once barren and rocky northern slopes of Central Park, covered with a wealth of tree and shrub and flower, all hastening to put forth their vesture of tenderest green. We old citizens of New York remember the time, not a quarter of a century ago, when a few scrubby firs scattered along these crags, and a few patches of grass and weeds alone formed a contrast with the naked and unpicturesque rocks. Now, on the contrary, all the vegetable wealth of other lands has been added to the varied riches of our native flora, to create a paradise, and the very granite itself has been covered with a gorgeous mantle of flowering shrubs and graceful creepers.

Thus can intelligence, industry, and perseverance convert, what appeared a hopelessly dead and barren nature, into life and beauty and perpetual joy.

Opportunities! Life is one grand continuous opportunity from infancy to our latest day. The conscientious, the resolute, and the thrifty turn each hour into golden treasures; the listless, the stolid, the sensual, like our Western Indians, allow the teeming mines to lie idle at their feet, with countless treasures unknown, unappreciated, undeveloped.

Have a Purpose in Life

Give us, therefore, in the conduct of life, men who have a purpose, who know what they have to do, and are determined to succeed; whose firm trust in God above them only increases their faith in themselves: Men Who Neglect Nothing; who constantly discipline their own minds, their own hearts, and exercise over their own powers and passions a sovereign control: men whose watchword in all their undertakings and difficulties, in all their alternations of bearing and forbearing, is DUTY; and who, in their labors, their successes, their failures, find themselves superior to fatigue, to good or ill luck, to praise or to blame,—because they begin and persevere and hope against hope itself, through a sense of duty,—of a sacred debt due to God and their own conscience.

How Education should prepare for the Work of Life

Education, training, discipline, cultivation of heart and mind, at home or at school, can only aim at one thing: to prepare young men for the business of life, for conduct, self-improvement, self-control, and success in the work, which the Divine Will sets apart for every individual, as the sole purpose of his existence.

In the material world we know what is the result of a constantly accelerating force, acting upon a body moving in a given direction, and in what an amazing ratio its velocity increases minute by minute, and hour by hour. It so happens that the Creator, both of the moral and the material universe, has stamped them both with such marvelous and striking analogies, that the spectacle of power exhibited in any field of the inanimate and unintelligent creation, may serve as a help toward studying its counterpart in the spiritual order.

For there are spiritual forces created by Him who is the sole source of life and of power; and they are ordained to act on the souls of men from the moment these are set forth by the Almighty Hand on the path of duty, and in the direction of their eternal destinies. Call these forces acting upon man’s rational nature, graces; they are given as light to his mind, enabling him clearly to know his duty toward God, toward himself, and toward his neighbor; given as instinct, impulse, inspiration to his will, enabling him to live up to the light that is in him. These mighty impulses, if obeyed faithfully by the soul—which can freely reject the proffered aid and vital force, as it can freely accept and follow the divine direction, urging it ever upward and heavenward—have an accelerating character; they augment, in a constantly increasing ratio, the soul’s power of getting nearer to God,—nearer to him in perfection and spiritual beauty. They lift her with an augmented velocity to new heights of goodness, of charity, of courage, of generosity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. They enable her to become more and more Godlike at each moment of her earthly career.

Just as in the mysterious depths of space in the starry heavens, the various bodies which eye or telescope can discern, are impelled onward in their various courses with a rapidity which appals even the scientific imagination, even so in the world of souls are there depths beyond depths, reaching away to limitless horizons, and heights above heights of acquired holiness, merit, and glory, making great and good human souls differ from each other and transcend each other in excellence, as bright star surpasses brightest star in splendor.

Superior Excellence demanded of the Men of our Day

Hence, whatever in the past may have been the various glories of great men—men distinguished above their fellows for Godlike virtue much more than intellectual superiority—yet must we rest well assured that it is the Divine Will, that we in our day and generation, should aim with His help, to rise higher still in goodness, in generosity, in nobility of conduct.

For—and we must not mislearn this vitally important lesson to every one of us—the formation of a great character, and the attainment of this same nobility of conduct, depend on our helping ourselves. The experience and practical wisdom of all past ages have expressed a golden truth in the saying: “God helps only who helps himself.”

It behooves every parent, every serious-minded person in the community to weigh well the following words, written by a well-known writer on the education given in Great Britain. How far they apply, if at all, to our own country, our readers must judge for themselves.

“There is an ambition,” says Smiles, “to bring up boys as gentlemen, or rather genteel men; though the result frequently is, only to make them gents. They acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and the result is that we have a vast number of gingerbread young gentry thrown upon the world, who remind one of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked up at sea, with only a monkey on board.”¹⁴14“Self-Help.”

Very different must be the result, if the great principles advocated in this book, and the memorable examples which illustrate their practice, are made the basis of the moral training given in families, schools, and colleges, or adopted as a guide by men of the world capable of influencing the young and inexperienced who look up to them.

Let our Young Men be God-fearing and Dutiful

Whatever else our young men may be, when formed at home by such parents as we are about to describe, and trained in Christian schools by God-fearing and accomplished masters, they will be at least conscientious and God-fearing themselves.

This is the first and greatest need of our age.

They will be also dutiful and high-minded. For the young man whose soul from childhood has been filled with that lofty sense of duty, as of a sacred, indispensable, and ennobling obligation due to the Most High God, will be disposed to discharge every office intrusted to him, as if he were immediately accountable to the Divine Majesty. Hence everything shall be done perfectly, because done for the sake of Him who is the most loving of Fathers, and the most generous of benefactors.

High-minded must ever be the men who are penetrated with this sense of duty, and act upon such lofty motives. He who beholds the Infinitely Great and Holy in every person to whom he is bound to yield lawful obedience, will not feel himself degraded in being subordinate to those who may be his own inferiors in birth, in education, and refinement. He will not fulfill his duty conscientiously, or go even beyond his duty in his endeavor to do well, because he is ambitious to obtain praise, or fearful of incurring blame. He is only supremely desirous of pleasing One who values the loving wish much more even than the perfect performance.

And this high-mindedness will be thus a safeguard against that baneful and tyrannical human respect, which is so apt to make old people as well as young omit the good they ought to do, and do the evil their conscience condemns, lest they should draw on themselves the displeasure, the ridicule, or the vain judgments of bad men.

The dutiful and the high-minded will ever be the faithful, the trustworthy, true to the death, because true to God and to themselves.

Need, in our Day, of the High-minded and Dutiful

Surely there is great need of such in our day.

And because they are thus dutiful and true,—they will be diligent, laborious, persevering, self-denying, and self-reliant, because placing their main dependence on the All-Mighty and putting forth to please Him, in their every work and endeavor, their whole strength and industry. Such men are,—everything taken into account,—the best calculated to succeed.

And such men,—be they born never so lowly,—are God’s true gentlemen,—the men whom all are forced to respect,—because they are incapable of meanness, fraud, or untruthfulness.

These are a few only of the features of the True Man so needed in all countries and at all periods of the world’s history, but especially needed at a time when noble living will avail infinitely more to save religion and society than eloquent discoursing or the most learned and beautiful writing.

Yes! the road of true manliness and unblemished honor which we are to travel over together, leads up by steep and toilsome paths to the only reward worthy of gentle souls. Like the maiden-knight of the ideal Christian chivalry, if we would keep our souls pure, and win the ecstatic joy of coming to close communion with the veiled Majesty of our Father, we must be ready to do and bear what the crowd recoil from.