True Men as We Need Them: A Book of Instruction for Men in the World

Letter from the Archbishop of New York

218 Madison Ave., New York, September 6, 1878.

Dear Father O’Reilly:

I am much pleased with your new work entitled “True Men as We Need Them.”

It is full of instructive lessons and wise counsels presented in an attractive form and adapted to various classes of men as we find them around us in the world.

I hope it will receive a wide circulation and be productive of much good.

I need not add that it has my cordial commendation.

Please accept my best wishes for your health and happiness, and believe me to remain,

Very sincerely your friend and servant, John Card. McCloskey, Archbishop of New York.

Rev. B. O’Reilly.

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Author’s Preface

THE hearty welcome given by the public to the Mirror of True Womanhood, encourages the author to send forth this volume as a companion to it. The same plan, so far as the subject-matter would permit, has been followed in both.

Renewing his sincere thanks to publisher, printer, and engraver, for their zealous and kindly cooperation, the author now leaves his work to the judgment of the public, and beseeches on its readers the blessing of Him who is Himself both Very God and True Man,—the ever-blessed Model of all true nobility of life.

NEW YORK, 8th September, 1878.

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Chapter I. 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 wordly 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—

“Such a man Might be a copy to these younger times, Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now But goers backward.”

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.

“This above all,—To thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

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

“Active doer, noble liver, Strong to labor, sure to conquer,”

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.” 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:

“My dear, dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is—spotless reputation;—that away, Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay. A jewel in a ten-times barred-up chest Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast. Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; Take honor from me, and my life is done.”

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.”

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.” Supreme and loving reverence for the Divine Majesty, and the filial fear of rendering one’s self pleasing 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.”

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.”

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.” 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.” 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!”… 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.”

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.” 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.

“I leave the plain, I climb the height; No branchy thicket shelter yields; But blessed forms in whistling storms Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields. A maiden-knight—to me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams; And, stricken by an angel’s hand, This mortal armor that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touched, are turned to finest air.”

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Chapter II. Ideal of the True Man’s Home

Nor do I find that the Heaven of heavens, which is the Lord’s, can be better called than Thine House, which contemplateth Thy delight without any need of going forth to another…. That chaste City of Thine, our Mother, which is above, and is free… clinging unto Thee with sublime love, shineth and gloweth from Thee like a perpetual noon, O House full of light and splendor! I have loved thy beauty, and the place where dwelleth the glory of my Lord, thy builder and owner.

—ST. AUGUSTINE.

THERE is a most beautiful and affecting passage at the close of the very last historical book left us by one of the greatest of patriots and legislators, reciting the magnificent prospect afforded him, just before his death, of the beautiful country divinely promised to his race. From the top of a mountain, at its southernmost extremity, he beheld the lovely home of his people stretching out before him in its length and breadth, smiling like the Garden of God in the world’s prime. The sight was the last earthly reward bestowed on upward of a century’s labors, hopes, and sufferings, before the eternal rest came to the great pilgrim and prophet.

Can we not, at the outset of our quest after true manhood, its ideal types, and glorious realizations, cast a glance at God’s beautiful earth before us, in which He bids us to create ourselves a paradise with his own assistance, bethinking us of the Eternal Home which is to be our rest, and animating ourselves to make of the earthly home its image and counterpart!

Is it not significant of a deep purpose that we should read in the very first pages of Holy Writ, how “the Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it”? There is no doubt but this Garden of Delights, selected by the All-Father from out the wide and lovely land of Eden, was the blissful home which he destined to our innocent First Parents and their innocent offspring. Fairer far than all the earth beside, the manifold beauties which this abode displayed, its peace, its security, the visible manifestations vouchsafed to its inhabitants of the Divine Presence and of the angelic spirits,—were all intended to lift up man’s thoughts and hopes toward the Eternal Paradise, prepared for him and his, as their resting place after labor and the crown of all the merits acquired by trial here below.

Fair, indeed, as was the portion of earth thus set apart by the Creator for the dwelling of his privileged creatures, and filled, as we may fancy it, with all the delights that made it a vision and foretaste of Heaven,—yet did God leave much to man to do, in order to make of that Garden a home which should be truly his own,—the creation of his own love and industry.

Adam had been created outside of this Garden of Delights, in some less favored portion of the vast domain reserved for his descendants. He thus was enabled, when transferred by his Divine Benefactor to the earthly paradise, to judge by comparison of the immense superiority of his new abode to all that his eyes had beheld hitherto. This brief experience prepared him to improve by his own husbandry even the teeming soil of paradise, and to guard with unwearied watchfulness the untold wealth,—intrusted to him not only in all the produce of this fairy spot, but in his own soul and its destinies, in the companion soon given to him in Eve, in their united innocence and bliss, and in the welfare of their offspring.

Thus, in the Home bestowed on him who first on earth bore the name of father and discharged its duties, we find that there was imposed a double law, regarding solely home-happiness and well-being,—the law of labor and of vigilance.

This law is still the blessed necessity which ennobles the life of man, and creates within his earthly home all that it can possess of bliss and nobleness: Every true man has to work to create his home, when he has it not; to preserve and increase its stores, where he receives it by inheritance; and he has to watch over its honor, its happiness, its security, with a most loving care.

We recall this primordial law, as well as the existence of the home to which it immediately applied, not that we may insist on its scope and fulfillment in this chapter—that must be reserved to another part of our work—but that we may set forth the design of the Almighty Wisdom, as displayed in His own labors in preparing us a Home eternal in the heavens, and in aiding us to be ourselves worthy of it in our own home-life here below.

The Work of the Almighty Father Is to Prepare Our Eternal Home.

In setting before your minds, O Christian men, who take up this book and peruse its pages, the great central fact in all religion and in all history, that the mighty “Work of God in the midst of years,” the divine work of Redemption in its complete economy, is but the preparation in time of the Home of eternity, there is a twofold fear that oppresses the writer. Were he to express in befitting words the glorious reality so magnificently and still so imperfectly described in Scripture, he would feel as if the reader might justly suspect him of exaggeration. And when he would attempt to convey in the simplest terms the overwhelming truth about God’s love for the human race, as manifested in the almost deified condition reserved in the life to come to His faithful servants, and in the Godlike rank and virtues, which are to be the condition of the true Christian in the present life, he cannot but dread lest the infirmities of language should fail to convey the great transcendent truth.

And yet the entire scheme of God’s work in creating the world and man, in appointing to him a supernatural rank and destiny, in raising him up through Christ, when fallen from his high estate, in creating through Christ a Spiritual House and Kingdom for the whole race, which is only a type of the Eternal Home and Kingdom, and in making of that Home above the masterpiece and crowning work of His power, His wisdom, and His love,—may be best stated to the mind alike of untutored childhood, and of cultivated manhood, by saying that the joint labors of God the Father, of Christ His incarnate Son, and of the Divine Spirit abiding with man evermore,—consist in preparing for mankind a HOME in the heavens worthy of God’s utmost magnificence, and of enabling mankind in this life to deserve the unspeakable glories of that Eternal Home.

Do not weary yet of the golden thought held out to you, like a potent spell-word, which, if you grasp and retain it lovingly, will open to your soul many ravishing prospects and sunny horizons stretching away among the eternal hills. Hear, rather, one or two mighty voices whose accents thrill upon the reverent soul, startling it like lightning flashing from opposite sides of the heavens.

“From the beginning of the world they have not heard, nor perceived with the ears; the eye hath not seen, O God, besides thee, what things thou hast prepared for them that wait for thee.”—“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him.” Hear how he whose pen was said to drop honey, the great St. Bernard, comments on this passage:

“Tell us, O Thou who preparest these things, what it is that thou preparest:—‘we shall be filled with the good things of thy house.’—But what are these good things? Wine, oil, and bread?—With all these we are familiar; we see them with our eyes, they pall upon our taste. What we seek is what eye hath not seen, O God, besides thee…. Here it is: God shall be all things in all of us. In the present life our reason is liable to frequent error in its conclusions, our will is swayed by a fourfold disturbing influence, and our memory is confused by obliviousness of every kind. To these three infirmities is thy glorious creature subjected, O God, sadly to his discomfort, but not hopelessly. For He who satisfieth in good things the desire of the soul, will Himself be to our reason the fullness of light, to our will the deep and overflowing tide of peace, and to our memory the unbroken course of eternity.

“O Truth! O Love! O Eternity! O blessed and bliss-bestowing Trinity! for thee doth this threefold wretchedness of mine ever miserably yearn, exiled as I am from Thee!”

The Chief Work of Every True Father Among Men, Is to Create a Home.

It is clear, from all this, that, after the salvation of one’s own soul, which must underlie the aims, thoughts, and actions of every Christian man, what is chiefly to be the end of every true father’s efforts, is the building up and sanctifying of a home, if he has none; or the maintaining and perfecting it in all honor, peace, prosperity, and happiness, where it exists.

This is, in God’s design and under His expressly declared will, the first and chief object of a true man’s solicitude.

Thus, while the divine Architect of the universe, conjointly with the angels who are the ministers of his fatherly providence over us, and with all true men who are laboring in conformity to the divine will,—is preparing in heaven a dwelling-place for all his faithful children, more magnificent than human intelligence can conceive of,—even so must you, beneath His eye, blessed and aided by him and his Angels, set about rearing your home or making of it the image here below of that House of God on high, where, in the words of St. Bernard, all shall be “Truth, and Love and Eternity,”—truth in your faith and your life, charity in your dealings with your household and all outside of it, and eternity so far as you can secure it, in the independence gained for your dear ones, in the spirit of faith and honor which you bequeath to them, in the very homestead itself which is to be a lasting center for their children’s children.

Nor, in the place of Him who, true Father as he is, knows no acceptation of persons,—is this primary and all-important duty of providing, maintaining, and brightening the family home, the exclusive duty of the great and the rich. There is not a poor laboring-man, who makes it his care to procure shelter, food, and raiment for his dear ones,—that is not obliged to aim at having his own home for them, and of making that home an image of heaven. There is not a youth who takes on himself the responsibilities of husband, who binds to his own lot the young wife of his choice,—who does not thereby bind himself to separate her from the whole world, to give her a home of her own, where she shall be sole mistress and queen.

Whether you be of high or of low degree, a man of wealth or a poor man depending on the earning of each day, whether advanced in years and with much experience of life’s difficulties, or just setting your foot on the path,—be earnest in your resolution to work in building up your home, and with it the honor and happiness of a family, and sing in your heart as you begin the effort of each new day and hour!

This is the Golden Rule of life for all of us, men of the world, or ministers of God’s sacraments, to set our hands earnestly and joyously to the joint work God appoints us to do—

To Build up True Christian Homes!

The teaching and guidance of the priest are ordained only as a help to fathers of families,—from those who rule States, to those who are the lowliest and poorest. The help of the governing classes, in their turn, as well as of the wealthy, is, by the law of Christian charity, due to their dependent and fortuneless brethren. So that the whole effort of religion and of the most favored members of the social body, should aim at assisting the poor man to create for himself a home, and to adorn it with all the best virtues of fatherhood.

This Is the Need of the Age.

We must have true Christian fathers and true Christian homes. Socialism and Communism present a frightful caricature of the helpful brotherly love which is the soul and the bond of unity in all States obeying the law of the Gospel. The earnest and successful labors of the directing classes to inculcate parental duty, to practice and enforce the sweet home-virtues, and especially to aid the laboring-man in securing for himself the privacy and the sanctities of home-life, constitute the only efficacious corrective to the pestilential errors of communistic declaimers and conspirators.

The charity which we thus urge upon the men of our day is not the exercise of a new virtue, nor the application of a new remedy to social evils unheard of till now.

The very birds of the air, the very insects in the field would teach mankind how to make of the creation of the home a joint labor, and a labor of love as well. To be sure, we know that it is the special part of a man to provide a home for his companion and their children, as well as to labor for its support and to watch over its security. We are here talking not only of the house which shelters the family, but of the love which brightens and warms it, and of all the admirable virtues that should make its chief ornament. Even in the building up of the material walls, the poor man’s wife will have to be most frequently his loving assistant, while in all the affections and virtues that make it a paradise, both have to contribute a generous share.

Just now, however, as the apostles of evil are endeavoring to inculcate on the mind of the laborer, that home and its sanctities and duties are the creation of the laborer’s worst enemies, it will be well, after seeing the example which God sets to man in His own most glorious work, to take a lesson from the bird and the bee.

Man Taught to Labor by the Birds.

See how they labor together, impelled by that instinct or half-intelligence given them by their wise Creator, to construct a nest in which they can shelter and rear their young. And how admirable are both their labor and their intelligence! Just when the first sure signs of returning spring and settled weather tell the husbandman that he can trust his seed to the ground, we see in our northern climates the birds in pairs selecting proper sites for their nests. The amount of labor, industry, and perseverance, which even the very smallest of these feathered tribes display in this, surely ought to be a lesson to the observant among us. Both birds are equally diligent in collecting materials and in rearing the walls of the structure, though it would appear that the task of giving the interior its shape, and of lining it with the soft materials that are to keep the eggs warm and to shield the callow young during their first period of helplessness, is left to the female,—not a little suggestive of the mother’s office in regulating and adorning the interior of her home.

They often work from the first peep of dawn till after the last glow of twilight to complete their undertaking. And what intelligence is displayed in the selection of the site, the choice of the materials, and the wonderful and varied industry with which these materials are employed for their destined purpose! For among birds there are miners, and carpenters, and masons, as well as weavers, tailors, and felt-makers, manifesting in their craft a skill so marvelous, and such a science of adaptation to climate, locality, and danger, that one is struck with admiration in studying the masterpieces which these feathered artisans produce. These weaver and tailor birds know also how to associate into guilds for mutual protection against their many foes, and their numbers render them secure against the most powerful birds of prey.

Taught by the Bee and the Ant.

Need we descend to the well-known examples of the bee and the ant? Indeed, the admirable constructions of these little insects (we omit to mention so many other species well known to the reader), are more like the homes of civilized folk, than the most elaborate nests of birds, whether solitary or gregarious. The nests of these are, for the most part, temporary, made of perishable materials, and destined to rear the brood of the season. Not so the hive of the honey-bee, or the prodigious structure reared by the white ant; these are permanent homes, where generation after generation of laborers is born and reared, and whence, the old home becoming too narrow, and not admitting of enlargement, colony after colony will issue forth to create new homes, adorned by the same intelligence, laborious habits, thrift, order, sobriety, and indomitable perseverance, displayed in the ways of their ancestors.

Yes, all nature teaches man these golden lessons of industry, loving co-operation, mutual aid, and dependence, order, purpose, system, devotion to the welfare and happiness of others, union of minds and hearts and hands under God to create and preserve anything lasting and glorious.

What is man without a home? More helpless and wretched than the beast, the fowl, or the insect. He is both the enemy and the prey of every creature on the face of the earth. But with a home, which he has labored to create, or to preserve and perfect, which he lights up with the lofty examples of his life, where,—like God Himself in the world,—he only lives to do good and make others good and happy, where the love he gives is returned to him a hundred-fold by the dear ones who owe him everything,—is not man a most Godlike being?

With this rapid glance at that sweet and sublime ideal which Religion holds up to the true man, let us now turn to the beautiful and soul-stirring realities of actual life, to the mighty divine-human forces at work beneath our eyes in creating and embellishing true Christian Homes.

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