CHARACTER-BUILDING

Life as a Fine Art

By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS

[Newell Dwight Hillis, clergyman, was born at Magnolia, Ia., September 2, 1858 His early education was secured at his native place and at Grinnell, Ia. At seventeen he served as missionary under the American Sunday School Union; but this labor was followed by further studies at Lake Forest University, where he graduated in 1884, and at McCormick Seminary, where his theological studies were completed in 1884.

He began preaching at the First Presbyterian Church of Peoria, Ill., which he left in 1890, after a period of successful ministry, to go to the Presbyterian Church at Evanston. Four years and a half later he accepted the call of the Central Church, Central Music Hall, Chicago, to succeed Prof. David Swing, and throughout his four years there attracted great crowds to hear his preaching. In 1899 he accepted a unanimous call to succeed Dr. Lyman Abbott in the pastorate of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and there he has continued the same success that marked his work in Chicago. In 1896 he published “A Man's Value to Society" and "The Investment of Influence." In 1897 appeared "Foretokens of Immortality," and in 1898, "How the Inner Light Failed." He is also the author of "Great Books as Life-Teachers," and "Influence of Christ in Modern Life." As a lecturer he has figured prominently, havi g presented "John Ruskin's Message to the Twentieth Century" many times.]

To live content with small means; to seck elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common-this is my symphony.

A

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.

MONG those gifted spirits who have toiled tirelessly to carry the individual life up to unity, symmetry, and beauty, let us hasten to mention the name of Channing. The child of genius, he was gifted with a literary style that lent

strange fascination to all his speech. But great as he was in intellect, his character shone with such splendor as to eclipse his genius. He was of goodness all compact.

Early the winds of adversity beat against his little bark. Invalidism and misfortune, too, threatened to destroy his career. But bearing up amid all misfortune, he slowly wrought out his ideal of life as a fine art. Patiently he perfected his dreams. Daily he practiced frugality, honor, justice, faith, love, and prayer. He met storm with calm; he met provocation with patience; he met organized iniquity with faith in God's eternal truth; he met ingratitude and enmity with forgiveness and love.

At last he completed his symphony of an ideal life, that he hoped would help the youth and maiden to make each day as perfect as a song, each deed as holy as a prayer, each character as perfect as a picture. For he felt that the life of child and youth, of patriot and parent should have a loveliness beyond that of any flower or landscape, and a majesty not found in any cataract or mountain, being clothed also with a beauty that does not inhere in Canova's marble and a permanency that is not possessed by Von Riles, a structure builded of thoughts and hopes and aspirations, of tears and prayers, whose foundation is eternal truth.

THE FOUNDATION OF HAPPINESS

In founding his ideal life upon contentment with small means, Channing pleads for simplicity and the return to “plain living and high thinking." He would fain double the soul's leisure by halving its wants.

Looking out upon his age, he beheld young men crazed with a mania for money. He saw them refusing to cross the college threshold, closing the book, neglecting conversation, despising friendship, postponing marriage, that they might increase their goods. Yet he remembered that earth's most gifted children have been content with small means, performing their greatest exploits midst comparative poverty.

The Divine carpenter and His immortal band dwelt far from luxury. Poor indeed were Socrates the reformer, and

Shelley—all these When that young

Epictetus the slave, and Virgil the poet. Burns, too, and Wordsworth and Coleridge, with Keats and dwelt midway between poverty and riches. English scholar learned that his relative had willed him a fortune of £5,000, he wrote the dying man begging him to abandon his design, saying that he already had one servant, and that added care and responsibility meant the cutting off of a few minutes for study in the morning and a few minutes for reflection at night.

A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY

Here are our own Hawthorne and Longfellow-" content with small means." Here is Emerson resigning his church in Boston and leaving fame behind him, that upon the little farm at Concord he might escape the thousand and one details that robbed his soul of its simplicity. Here is Thoreau building his log cabin by Walden pond, living on $40 a year because he saw that man was being "destroyed by his unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with much furniture and tripped with his own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, whose only hope was in rigid economy and Spartan simplicity."

Ours is a world where Cervantes writes Don Quixote living upon three bowls of porridge brought by the jailer of the prison. The German philosopher asked one cluster of grapes, one glass of milk, and a slice of bread twice each day. Having completed his philosophy, the old scholar looked back upon forty happy years, saying that every fine dinner his friends had given him had blunted his brain for one day, and indigestion consumed an amount of vital energy that would have sufficed for one page of good writing.

A wise youth will think twice before embarking upon a career involving large wealth. Some there are possessed of vast property whose duty it is to bravely carry their heavy burden in the interests of society and the increase of life's comforts, conveniences, and happiness. Yet wise Agur's prayer still holds: "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Whittier, on his little farm, refusing a princely sum for a lecture, was content with small means. Wendell Phillips, preferring the

slave and the contempt of Boston's merchants and her patrician society, chose to "be worthy, not respectable." Some Ruskin, distributing his bonds and sticks and lands to found workingmen's clubs, art schels and colleges, that he might have more leisure for enriching his imagination and heart, chose to "be wealthy, not rich." Needing many forms of wisdom, our age needs none more than the grace to live content with small means, seeking elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion."

When the sage counsels us to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages," he opens to us the secrets of the soul's increase in wisdom and happiness. All culture begins with listening. Growth is not through shrewd thinking or eloquent speaking, but through accurate seeing and hearing. Our world is one vast whispering gallery, yet only those who listen hear "the still, small voice" of truth. Putting his ear down to the rocks, the listening geologist hears the story of the rocks. Standing under the stars, the listening astronomer hears the music of the spheres. Leaving behind the din and dust of the city, Agassiz plunged into the forests of the Amazon, and listening to boughs and buds and birds he found out all their secrets. One of our wisest teachers has said: "For a thousand elquent speakers like Demosthenes there is only one great thinker like Plato. For a thousand wise thinkers like Plato, there is but one great seer and listener like Paul." For greatness is vision. Opening his eyes, Newton sees the planets revolve and finds his fame. Opening his ears, Watt hears the movement of steam and finds his fortune. Millet explained his fame by saying he copied the colors of the sunset at the moment when reapers bow the head in silent prayer. The great bard, too, tells us he went apart and listened to find "sermons in stones, books in the running brooks."

THE SECRET OF GREATNESS

It is a proverb that pilgrims to foreign lands find only what they take with them. Riding through the New England hills between Salem and Boston, Lowell spake not to his companion, for now he was looking out upon the pageantry of a glorious

October day, and he remembered that this was the road forever associated with Paul Revere's ride. Reaching the outskirts of Boston, he roused from his reverie to discover that his silent companion had been brooding over bales and barrels, not knowing that this had been one of those rare days when October holds an art exhibit, and also oblivious to the fact that he had been passing through scenes historic through the valor of the brave boy.

Of the four artists copying the same landscape near Chamouni, all saw a different scene. To an idler a river means a fish pool, to a heated schoolboy a bath; to the man of affairs the stream suggests a turbine wheel. Coleridge thought the bank of his favorite stream was made to lie down upon, but Bunyan, beholding the stream through the iron bars of a prison cell, felt the breezes of the Delectable Mountains cool his fevered cheek, and stooping down he wet his parched lips with the waters of the river of life. Nature has no message for heedless, inattentive hearers. It is possible for a youth to go through life deaf to the sweetest sounds that ever fell over Heaven's battlements, and blind to the beauty of landscape and mountain and sea and sky. There is no music in the autumn wind until the listener comes. There is no order and beauty in the rolling spheres until some Herschel stands beneath the stars. There is no fragrance in the violet until the lover of flowers bends down above the blossoms. That youth may have culture without college who gives heed to Channing's injunction "to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages."

Listening to stars, Laplace heard the story how fire mists. are changed to habitable earths, and so became wise toward iron and wood, steel and stone. Listening to birds, Cuvier heard the song within the shell, and found out the life history of all things that creep or swim or fly. Listening to babes that have, as Froebel thought, been so recently playmates with angels, the philosopher discovered the teachableness, trust, and purity of childhood, the secret of individual happiness and progress. Listening to sages, the youth of to-day garners into the storehouse of his mind all the intellectual treasures of the good and great of past ages.