Nicodemus was a leading member of the Sanhedrim, a representative of that section of the rulers who, like the rest of the nation, were expecting a deliverer, a king who should prevail against the Cæsar. They had sent to the Baptist, and had heard of his testimony to the young Galilean, who had now come to Jerusalem, and was showing signs of a power which they could not but acknowledge. For, had he not cleansed the temple, which they had never been able to do, but, notwithstanding their pretended reverence for it, had allowed to be turned into a shambles and an exchange? They saw that a part of the people were ready to gather to him, but that he had refused to commit himself to them. This, then, the best of them must have felt, was no mere leader of a low, fierce, popular party or faction. Nicodemus at any rate was evidently inclined to doubt whether he might not prove to be the king they were looking for, as the Baptist had declared. The doubt must be solved, and he would see for himself.

And so he comes to Christ, and hears directly from him, that he has indeed come to set up a kingdom, but that it is no visible kingdom like the Cæsars’, but a kingdom over men’s spirits, one in which rulers as well as peasants must become new men before they can enter – that a light has come into the world, and “he that doeth truth cometh to that light.”

From beginning to end there is no word to catch this ruler, or those he represented; no balancing of phrases or playing with plausible religious shibboleths, with which Nicodemus would be familiar, and which might please, and perchance reconcile this well-disposed ruler, and the powerful persons he represented. There is, depend upon it, no severer test of manliness than our behavior to powerful persons, whose aid would advance the cause we have at heart. We know from the later records that the interview of that night, and the strange words he had heard at it, made a deep impression on this ruler. His manliness, however, breaks down for the present. He shrinks back and disappears, leaving the strange young peasant to go on his way.

The same splendid directness and incisiveness characterize his teaching at Samaria. There, again, He attacks at once the most cherished local traditions, showing that the place of worship matters nothing, the object of worship everything. That object is a Father of men’s spirits, who wills that all men shall know and worship him, but who can only be worshipped in spirit and in truth. He, the peasant who is talking to them, is himself the Messiah, who has come from this Father of them and him, to give them this spirit of truth in their own hearts.

The Jews at Jerusalem had been clamoring round him for signs of his claim to speak such words, and in the next few days his own people would be crying out for his blood when they heard them. These Samaritans make no such demand, but hear and recognize the message and the messenger. The seed is sown and he passes on, never to return and garner the harvest; deliberately preferring the hard, priest-ridden lake-cities of the Jews as the centre of his ministry. He will leave ripe fields for others to reap. This decision, interpret it as we will, is that of no soft or timid reformer. Take this test and compare Christ’s choice of his first field for work with that of any other great leader of men.

XXXV

Happy is the man who is able to follow straight on, though often wearily and painfully, in the tracks of the divine ideal who stood by his side in his youth, though sadly conscious of weary lengths of way, of gulfs and chasms, which since those days have come to stretch between him and his ideal – of the difference between the man God meant him to be – of the manhood he thought he saw so clearly in those early days – and the man he and the world together managed to make of him.

I say, happy is that man. I had almost said that no other than he is happy in any true or noble sense, even in this hard materialistic nineteenth century, when the faith, that the weak must go to the wall, that the strong alone are to survive, prevails as it never did before – which on the surface seems specially to be organized for the destruction of ideals and the quenching of enthusiasms. I feel deeply the responsibility of making any assertion on so moot a point; nevertheless, even in our materialistic age, I must urge you all, as you would do good work in the world, to take your stand resolutely and once for all, and all your lives through, on the side of the idealists.

XXXVI

He who has the clearest and intensest vision of what is at issue in the great battle of life, and who quits himself in it most manfully, will be the first to acknowledge that for him there has been no approach to victory except by the faithful doing day by day of the work which lay at his own threshold.

On the other hand, the universal experience of mankind – the dreary confession of those who have merely sought a “low thing,” and “gone on adding one to one;” making that the aim and object of their lives – unite in warning us that on these lines no true victory can be had, either for the man himself or for the cause he was sent into the world to maintain.

No, there is no victory possible without humility and magnanimity; and no humility or magnanimity possible without an ideal. Now there is not one amongst us all who has not heard the call in his own heart to put aside all evil habits, and to live a brave, simple, truthful life. It is no modern, no Christian experience, this. The choice of Hercules, and numberless other Pagan stories, the witness of nearly all histories and all literatures, attest that it is an experience common to all our race. It is of it that the poet is thinking in those fine lines of Emerson which are written up in the Hall of Marlborough College:

“So close is glory to our dust,
So near is God to man —
When duty whispers low, ‘thou must,’
The youth replies, ‘I can.’”

It is this whisper, this call, which is the ground of what I have, for want of a better name, been speaking of as idealism. Just in so far as one listens to and welcomes it he is becoming an idealist – one who is rising out of himself, and into direct contact and communion with spiritual influences, which even when he shrinks from them, and tries to put them aside, he feels and knows to be as real – to be more real than all influences coming to him from the outside world – one who is bent on bringing himself and the world into obedience to these spiritual influences. If he turns to meet the call and answers ever so feebly and hesitatingly, it becomes clearer and stronger. He will feel next, that just in so far as he is becoming loyal to it he is becoming loyal to his brethren: that he must not only build his own life up in conformity with its teaching, must not only find or cut his own way straight to what is fair and true and noble, but must help on those who are around him and will come after him, and make the path easier and plainer for them also.

I have indicated in outline, in a few sentences, a process which takes a life-time to work out. You all know too, alas! even those who have already listened most earnestly to the voice, and followed most faithfully, how many influences there are about you and within you which stand across the first steps in the path, and bar your progress; which are forever dwarfing and distorting the ideal you are painfully struggling after, and appealing to the cowardice and laziness and impurity which are in every one of us, to thwart obedience to the call. But here, as elsewhere, it is the first step which costs, and tells. He who has once taken that, consciously and resolutely, has gained a vantage-ground for all his life.

XXXVII

Our race on both sides of the Atlantic has, for generations, got and spent money faster than any other, and this spendthrift habit has had a baleful effect on English life. It has made it more and more feverish and unsatisfying. The standard of expenditure has been increasing by leaps and bounds, and demoralizing trade, society, every industry, and every profession until a false ideal has established itself, and the aim of life is too commonly to get, not to be, while men are valued more and more for what they have, not for what they are.

The reaction has, I trust, set in. But the reign of Mammon will be hard to put down, and all wholesome influences which can be brought to bear upon that evil stronghold will be sorely needed.

I say, deliberately, that no man can gauge the value, at this present critical time, of a steady stream of young men, flowing into all professions and all industries, who have learnt resolutely to speak in a society such as ours, “I can’t afford;” who have been trained to have few wants and to serve these themselves, so that they may have always something to spare of power and of means to help others; who are “careless of the comfits and cushions of life,” and content to leave them to the valets of all ranks.

And take my word for it, while such young men will be doing a great work for their country, and restoring an ideal which has all but faded out, they will be taking the surest road to all such success as becomes honest men to achieve, in whatever walk of life they may choose for themselves.

XXXVIII

The first aim for your time and your generation should be, to foster, each in yourselves, a simple and self-denying life – your ideal to be a true and useful one, must have these two characteristics before all others. Of course purity, courage, truthfulness are as absolutely necessary as ever, without them there can be no ideal at all. But as each age and each country has its own special needs and weaknesses, so the best mind of its youth should be bent on serving where the need is sorest, and bringing strength to the weak places. There will be always crowds ready to fall in with the dapper, pliant ways which lead most readily to success in every community. Society has been said to be “always and everywhere in conspiracy against the true manhood of every one of its members,” and the saying, though bitter, contains a sad truth. So the faithful idealist will have to learn, without arrogance and with perfect good temper, to treat society as a child, and never to allow it to dictate. So treated, society will surely come round to those who have a high ideal before them, and therefore firm ground under their feet.

“Coy Hebe flies from those that woo
And shuns the hand would seize upon her;
Live thou thy life, and she will sue,
To pour for thee the cup of honor.”

Let me say a word or two more on this business of success. Is it not, after all, the test of true and faithful work? Must it not be the touchstone of the humble and magnanimous, as well as of the self-asserting and ambitious? Undoubtedly; but here again we have to note that what passes with society for success, and is so labeled by public opinion, may well be, as often as not actually is, a bad kind of failure.

Public opinion in our day has, for instance, been jubilant over the success of those who have started in life penniless and have made large fortunes. Indeed, this particular class of self-made men is the one which we have been of late invited to honor. Before doing so, however, we shall have to ask with some care, and bearing in mind Emerson’s warnings, by what method the fortune has been made. The rapid accumulation of national wealth in England can scarcely be called a success by any one who studies the methods by which it has been made, and its effects on the national character. It may be otherwise with this or that millionaire, but each case must be judged on its own merits.

XXXIX

I remember hearing, years ago, of an old merchant who, on his death-bed, divided the results of long years of labor, some few hundreds in all, amongst his sons. “It is little enough, my boys,” were almost his last words, “but there isn’t a dirty shilling in the whole of it.” He had been a successful man too, though not in the “self-made” sense. For his ideal had been, not to make money, but to keep clean hands. And he had been faithful to it.

XL

In reading the stories of many persons whom the English nation is invited to honor, I am generally struck with the predominance of the personal element. The key-note seems generally some resolve taken in early youth connected with their own temporal advancement. This one will be Lord Mayor; this other Prime Minister; a third determines to own a fine estate near the place of his birth, a fourth to become head of the business in which he started as an errand-boy. They did indeed achieve their ends, were faithful to the idea they had set before themselves as boys; but I doubt if we can put them anywhere but in the lower school of idealists. For the predominant motive being self-assertion, their idealism seems never to have got past the personal stage, which at best is but a poor business as compared with the true thing.

XLI

Christ is the great idealist. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” is the ideal he sets before us – the only one which is permanent and all-sufficing. His own spirit communing with ours is the call which comes to every human being.

XLII

Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends; for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self, and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble and living in another man.

But, even to him who has the gift, it is often a great puzzle to find out whether a man is really a friend or not. The following is recommended as a test in the case of any man about whom you are not quite sure; especially if he should happen to have more of this world’s goods, either in the shape of talents, rank, money, or what not, than you:

Fancy the man stripped stark naked of every thing in the world, except an old pair of trousers and a shirt, for decency’s sake, without even a name to him, and dropped down in the middle of Holborn or Piccadilly. Would you go up to him then and there, and lead him out from among the cabs and omnibuses, and take him to your own home, and feed him, and clothe him, and stand by him against all the world, to your last sovereign and your last leg-of-mutton? If you wouldn’t do this, you have no right to call him by the sacred name of friend. If you would, the odds are that he would do the same by you, and you may count yourself a rich man; for, probably, were friendship expressible by, or convertible into current coin of the realm, one such friend would be worth to a man at least £100,000. How many millionaires are there in England? I can’t even guess; but more by a good many, I fear, than there are men who have ten real friends. But friendship is not so expressible or convertible. It is more precious than wisdom, and wisdom “can not be gotten for gold, nor shall rubies be mentioned in comparison thereof.” Not all the riches that ever came out of earth and sea are worth the assurance of one such real abiding friendship in your heart of hearts.

But for the worth of a friendship commonly so called – meaning thereby a sentiment founded on the good dinners, good stories, opera stalls, and days’ shooting, you have gotten or hope to get out of a man, the snug things in his gift, and his powers of procuring enjoyment of one kind or another to your miserable body or intellect – why, such a friendship as that is to be appraised easily enough, if you find it worth your while; but you will have to pay your pound of flesh for it one way or another – you may take your oath of that. If you follow my advice, you will take a £10 note down, and retire to your crust of bread and liberty.

XLIII

The idea of entertaining, of being hospitable, is a pleasant and fascinating one to most young men; but the act soon gets to be a bore to all but a few curiously constituted individuals. With these hospitality becomes first a passion and then a faith – a faith the practice of which, in the cases of some of its professors, reminds one strongly of the hints on such subjects scattered about the New Testament. Most of us feel, when our friends leave us, a certain sort of satisfaction, not unlike that of paying a bill; they have been done for, and can’t expect anything more for a long time. Such thoughts never occur to your really hospitable man. Long years of narrow means can not hinder him from keeping open house for whoever wants to come to him, and setting the best of everything before all comers. He has no notion of giving you anything but the best he can command. He asks himself not, “Ought I to invite A or B? do I owe him anything?” but, “Would A or B like to come here?” Give me these men’s houses for real enjoyment, though you never get anything very choice there – (how can a man produce old wine who gives his oldest every day?) – seldom much elbow-room or orderly arrangement. The high arts of gastronomy and scientific drinking, so much valued in our highly-civilized community, are wholly unheeded by him, are altogether above him, are cultivated, in fact, by quite another set, who have very little of the genuine spirit of hospitality in them; from whose tables, should one by chance happen upon them, one rises, certainly with a feeling of satisfaction and expansion, chiefly physical, but entirely without that expansion of heart which one gets at the scramble of the hospitable man. So that we are driven to remark, even in such every-day matters as these, that it is the invisible, the spiritual, which, after all, gives value and reality even to dinners; and, with Solomon, to prefer to the most touching diner Russe the dinner of herbs where love is, though I trust that neither we nor Solomon should object to well-dressed cutlets with our salad, if they happen to be going.

XLIV

There are few of us who do not like to see a man living a brave and righteous life, so long as he keeps clear of us; and still fewer who do like to be in constant contact with one who, not content with so living himself, is always coming across them, and laying bare to them their own faint-heartedness, and sloth, and meanness. The latter, no doubt, inspires the deeper feeling, and lays hold with a firmer grip of the men he does lay hold of, but they are few. For men can’t keep always up to high pressure till they have found firm ground to build upon, altogether outside of themselves; and it is hard to be thankful and fair to those who are showing us, time after time, that our foothold is nothing but shifting sand.

XLV

Reader! had you not ever a friend a few years older than yourself, whose good opinion you were anxious to keep? A fellow teres atque rotundus; who could do everything better than you, from Plato and tennis down to singing a comic song and playing quoits? If you have had, wasn’t he always in your rooms or company whenever anything happened to show your little weak points?

XLVI

To come back home after every stage of life’s journeying with a wider horizon – more in sympathy with men and nature, knowing ever more of the righteous and eternal laws which govern them, and of the righteous and loving will which is above all, and around all, and beneath all, this must be the end and aim of all of us, or we shall be wandering about blind-fold, and spending time and labor and journey-money on that which profiteth nothing.

XLVII

What man among us all, if he will think the matter over calmly and fairly, can honestly say that there is any spot on the earth’s surface in which he has enjoyed so much real, wholesome, happy life as in a hay field? He may have won on horseback or on foot at the sports and pastimes in which Englishmen glory; he may have shaken off all rivals, time after time, across the vales of Aylesbury, or of Berks, or any other of our famous hunting counties; he may have stalked the oldest and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of the year in the Tweed, and trout in the Thames; he may have made topping averages in first-rate matches of cricket; or have made long and perilous marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain, or glacier; he may have successfully attended many breakfast-parties within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded by all the fairy-land of pomp, and beauty, and luxury, which London can pour out; his voice may have sounded over hushed audiences at St. Stephens or in the law-courts; or he may have had good times in any other scenes of pleasure or triumph open to Englishmen; but I much doubt whether, on putting his recollections fairly and quietly together he would not say at last that the fresh-mown hay-field is the place where he has spent the most hours which he would like to live over again, the fewest which he would wish to forget.

As children, we stumble about the new-mown hay, revelling in the many colors of the prostrate grass and wild flowers, and in the power of tumbling where we please without hurting ourselves; as small boys, we pelt one another, and the village school-girls, and our nurse-maids, and young lady cousins with the hay, till, hot and weary, we retire to tea or syllabub beneath the shade of some great oak or elm standing up like a monarch out of the fair pasture; or, following the mowers, we rush with eagerness on the treasures disclosed by the scythe stroke – the nest of the unhappy late-laying titlark, or careless field-mouse; as big boys, we toil ambitiously with the spare forks and rakes, or climb into the wagons and receive with open arms the delicious load as it is pitched up from below, and rises higher and higher as we pass along the long lines of haycocks: a year or two later we are strolling there with our first sweethearts, our souls and tongues loaded with sweet thoughts, and soft speeches; we take a turn with the scythe as the bronzed mosses lie in the shade for their short rest, and willingly pay our footing for the feat. Again, we come back with book in pocket, and our own children tumbling about us as we did before them; now romping with them, and smothering them with the sweet-smelling load – now musing and reading and dozing away the delicious summer evenings. And so shall we not come back to the end, enjoying as grandfathers the love-making and the rompings of younger generations yet?

Were any of us ever really disappointed or melancholy in a hay-field? Did we ever lie fairly back on a hay-cock and look up into the blue sky, and listen to the merry sounds, the whetting of scythes, and the laughing prattle of women and children, and think evil thoughts of the world or our brethren? Not we! or, if we have so done, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and deserve never to be out of town again during hay-harvest.

There is something in the sights and sounds of a hay-field which seems to touch the same chord in one as Lowell’s lines in the “Lay of Sir Launfal,” which end:

“For a cap and a bell our lives we pay,
We wear out our lives with toiling and tasking;
It is only Heaven that is given away;
It is only God may be had for the asking.”

But the philosophy of the hay-field remains to be written. Let us hope that whoever takes the subject in hand will not dissipate all its sweetness in the process of the inquiry wherein the charm lies.