"Whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van—

The fittest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man."

II. THE BEATIFIED.

Respectfully Inscribed to the Clergy of Every Denomination in Christendom.

(Spoken at Humboldt, Iowa, September 19, 1875.)

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."-Matthew v:8. The text divides naturally into three distinct subjects of thought, (1) Blessedness, (2) Purity of Heart, and (3) Seeing God.

Blessedness (or happiness) is that indefinable boon after which all are seeking and have ever sought from the beginning. To define correctly a happy life was the end kept constantly in view by the philosophers of the olden time, from Socrates to Seneca, who though last in the order of time is not least in the order of merit. How may blessedness be assured? is the question they sought to answer in lengthy disquisitions, Seneca devoting an entire volume to discouraging of “A happy Life"-a subject which in a single lucid sentence the divine teacher, Jesus makes so clear that no one can ever question its correctness. Yet, alas! how few shape their hearts and lives in accordance with the truth! Some seek blessedness in the gratification of low, animal desires, some in the wine cup, some in hoarded wealth, some in acquired knowledge, some in conquest of nations, and some in the acquisition of fame, as poets, painters, etc.

Who of my hearers will say that sensual gratification brings blessedness? The young and inexperienced are sometimes unfortunately misled into this way of erroneous thinking. Thus deluded they become polluted in body and soul. The grave soon kindly hides them from sight and their names perish! The ancient poets picture the sirens as possessing the most beautiful and fascinating womanly forms and voices; but whose feet divide into sharp and ugly claws that rend in pieces the unfortunate mariners brought within their power. Ulysses, warned by Circe, took the precaution of being, by his own direction, bound fast with strong cords (that he could not loose) to the mast of his good ship, before he ventured to behold sirens and listen to their songs. Let us sail clear of their enchanted island, not touching its dangerous shores.

How many of us have shed bitter tears of sorrow at beholding the deplorable effects of strong drink! The drunkard seeks blessedness in the wine cup. Oh, my son, beware! In the end it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. How many of us have beheld near and dear ones go down to drunkard's graves! How many of us have promising sons whom we, in most helpless, hopeless and bitter agony of soul, shall tearfully inter in the inebriate's disgraceful sepulcher! How many of us have well-beloved daughters, whom we have brought up with tenderest care and educated in the best institutions of learning that our grand country affords, to fit them to become the worthy and happy companions of such as God designed man to be,—

"In action, how like an angel;
In apprehension, how like a god."

Ah, see your darling child heart-broken now, she pines in wretchedness and want. See her, and her naked, starving offspring, shivering about the expiring flame in the empty grate this freezing winter's night.

"Perhaps this hour in Misery's squalid nest

She strains her infant to her joyless breast,

And with a mother's fears, shrinks from the rocking blast."

What is it that startles and affrights her and her little children so? Is it the unnatural husband and father's footsteps upon the threshold that they hear? Yes, he, the drunken and unworthy, is indeed returned home blear-eyed, cursing and staggering from his midnight's debauch!

The wine cup may be put far from us in one way only by our determinedly resisting, the demon Intemperance in all his ugly shapes and garbs and especially the tobacco serpent, clothed as he is in most disgusting, scaly habiliments that reek with abominable filth and sickening slime, and the odor of whose offensive breath is unbearable. Whoever is a slave to tobacco has already sold his soul to the devil. Whoever is addicted to tobacco and does not become a drunkard, it will be because he stops short of the abyss over which he is tottering and into which he is ready to fall. It will take a very little push to send him headlong into the fiery gulf; for see he has already yielded up his sacred liberty become a slave to appetite, senseless, unnatural appetite, more degrading than is the appetite for strong drink, and far more foul and disgusting. See his blackened teeth, offensive breath and uncivilized manners and appearance! He cannot carry this savage-acquired practice into any decent place, be it family parlor, sacred pew or palace car. He must submit to be ignominiously banished into dens and caverns of filth by the loathsome tobacco habit. A craving for more potent stimulants is awakened by it, so that it is the almost direct cause of drunkenness. It is Satan let loose on earth for a season, and oh, may that season soon draw to a close and he be confined in the bottomless pit, to remain there for evermore.

The father is anxious that his son shall be more temperate than he, himself, has ever been; for what father would have his darling boy addicted to tobacco? Not one in a million. But if we would have our sons be freemen we must set the example of freedom. All reason and all experience are arrayed against the tobacco habit. Who can account for the almost universal prevalence of this shameful habit and admit man to be a rational creature at all? If reason were the guide of youth, in the formation of habits, it would be necessary to admit that man is not a rational animal. But reason is not the guide, though it ought to be. Example is. Example is the only teacher of youth. This may be stated as a law-a fixed rule that has no exception. The old, too often, are slaves of bad habits acquired in immature youth. Reason is enthroned (if ever) only when the mind has reached its maturity. Then man may consider what he ought to do and fight against the great enemy-the Satan of bad habits acquired in youth, and disregarding what others do he may try to do what is "according to reason.”

The young imitate what they see done by others, especially by those whom they most admire. The example of the great (as of General Grant in smoking) has a most potent influence for evil over their minds and actions. Badness seems to be catching like contagious disease. Goodness, like health, is not, it seems, so catching. A bad example set by a great man does incalculable harm.

Another law also steps in to help drag down the young-the law of inheritance. By saturating our flesh and poisoning our blood with the deadly poison of tobacco, our children inherit a diseased craving

for stimulanta, as consumption and insanity are inherited.

And do ye seek for blessedness, O ye fathers in the use of tobacco? It is not to be found there. Your tobacco-tainted breath you breathe into the face of the wife of your youth during the long years of your married life, and she, poor soul, religiously bears it as a "cross." We acquired this loathsome practice from the example of the untutored, enemy-scalping, woman-enslaving aborigines of the stone age of America and it is a practice only suited to the condition of the lowest savages and the degradation of woman. To sit idly, bent over the little squaw-built fire in the center of the lazy Indian's wigwam, expectorating from between dirty, tobacco-scaled teeth the black and disgusting ooze, into the flames and ashes, or upon the vermin-reeking dirt floor, is not greatly out of harmony with the surroundings, yet unsavory even there. But the Indian's wigwam is the only place (we may observe) where men and women sit around the same fire, that the common notice is not posted conspicuously, "No Smoking or Chewing of Tobacco Allowed Here;" for the tobacco habit is incongruous to any condition of civilized life, as all men (and more especially all women) well know.

And what blessedness is there in the insatiate struggle for wealth? What blunting of the moral sense when we take what is not our own by charging too high a price for what we have to sell, paying the worker too low a price for his labor, or taking advantage of some technicality, of the law to seize our neighbor's farm for a trifling debt. "The love of money is the root of all evil." It is the direct cause of all wars and oppressions, and of nearly all the wrongs that man has to suffer from fellow men. Does wealth bestow blessedness on its possessor? "I made me great works," says Solomon, "I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards, I made me gardens and orchards and planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees. I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that are in Jerusalem before me. I gathered me also silver and gold and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces. I got me men singers and women singers and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments and that of all sorts. So I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me, and whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labors; and this was the portion of all my labor. Then I looked on all the works my hands had wrought and on the labor that I had labored to do; and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

A similar experience the wise king had in pursuit of knowledge. "I saw," he said, "that wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness; the wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness and I perceived also that one event happened to all. Then I said in my heart, as it happeneth to the fool so it happeneth even to me, and why was I then made wise? Then I said in my heart that is also vanity."

Solomon's wisdom, then, did not bring true blessedness to him. It would not to us. To be acquainted with all the secrets of science, to have scaled the mountain peaks of knowledge, and to have explored her ocean beds and hidden caves, to have deciphered all the hieroglyphics on the tombs along the Nile, to have read the inscriptions on all the tablets found on the plains of Babylon, and to have amassed the learning of a Newton or a Humboldt, would not make us blestwould not satisfy. To be a statesman great as Pericles or Lincoln, or an orator like Demosthenes or Webster, or a conqueror great as Alexander or Wellington, would not bring us true blessedness. Was the great

est of poets, even Homer, truly happy? Was Byron or Chatterton, or Burns, or Keats, or Poe? The painter before his canvas,

"Plucking the shadows wild forth with his reaching fancy."

Is he truly blest?

"Ah, there's a deathless name,

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn."

But the poet moralizes:

"This unreined ambition

Turns the heart to ashes, and with not a spring

Left in the desert for the spirit's lip,

We look upon our splendor and forget
The thirst with which we perish."

II. Purity of Heart.

"Happiness belongs to the mind and depends not for its existence upon outward conditions"-is the doctrine of the philosophers of antiquity. "The seat of it is within," says my favorite Seneca;" and there is no cheerfulness like the resolution of a brave mind that has fortune under his feet. He that can look death in the face and bid it welcome. open his doors to poverty and bridle his appetites; this is the man whom providence has established in the possession of inviolable delights." Again he says: "the true felicity of life is to be free from perturbations, to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present without any anxious dependence upon the future. Not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient; for he that is so wants nothing." This is the Roman virtue: "An invincible greatness of mind not to be elevated or dejected by good or ill fortune." And this the Roman wisdom:-"The habit of a perfect mind and the perfection of humanity raised as high as nature can carry it." Let me now seriously inquire: Does the divine law of Jesus Christ rise higher than the sublime level of the ancient excellence here brought to view? I answer unhesitatingly, it certainly does. It includes all this and adds something supereminently higher still. It introduces and emphasizes an elemental perfection of personal character wanting in the bull-dog "virtue" and selfish "wisdom" of the Greek and Roman philosophy.

"Blessed are the pure in heart." Here is the blessedness, not of the hardened warrior steeling his soul against suffering; but of the angels of love in Paradise. The old philosophy seems to have oozed out from the rocks of the world's iron age, of war, cruelty and woe; Christianity to have flowed out of crystal springs inside the Garden of Eden before the fall, ere war, cruelty and woe were known. Philosophy seems to have been given as an armor of steel to protect its stubborn possessors against the attacks of savage men, armed with battle-axes, pikes and bludgeons. Christianity seems to have been given to inspire compassionate men to do disinterested deeds of love, charity and mercy, to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out the demons, make the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, to take the little children up in loving arms and bless them, and to bring the dead to life. The accounts of Christian martyrdoms from Stephen to Servetus prove how well Christianity prepares the mind to endure, too, all kinds of sufferings with a most willing submission and sublime fortitude.

Jesus directs his speech to a higher order of spirits than the rough Greek and Roman warriors, that the philosophy of that day was fitted for and addressed to, when he pronounces his benediction of "blessed" upon the "pure in heart." He seems to be addressing the glorified hosts of heaven, or such of earth as Milton describes:

And sons of men whom God hath thus advanced,

Created in His image there to dwell

And worship Him and in reward to rule

Over His works on earth, in sea, or air,

And multiply a race of worshippers,

Holy and just: thrice happy if they know
Their happiness and persevere upright."

The philosophy of Greece and Rome took man as it found him in that day and regulated his actions, conforming them to an arbitrary law formulated in the intellect of the theorist; but it left the man unchanged in heart, except, perhaps, to be more dogged still. But Jesus takes the unregenerate man in hand to regenerate him,—“you must be born again"-begins with the heart-changes it, and thus (the heart being the fountainhead of human actions) he changes the whole subsequent conduct of the man. Saul becomes Paul, not in obedience to a philosophy learned by him through a long course of study in the schools (though he once sat at the feet of the eminent Judean teacher, Gamaliel,) but in obedience to a new love instantaneously implanted in his heart.

True, indeed, his mind was, at the same time, changed. New ideas had entered his brain; but they passed through it and penetrated his heart; or rather we may say, his radiant heart enkindling his mind, inflamed it to a blazing torch. He sat on his horse, a heartless sheriff with warrants in his possession "from the chief priests of Jerusalem" directing him to arrest and punish violators of the Jewish law in Damascus; he arose from the ground a philanthropist, of whom John Howard and Elizabeth Fry were but faint shadows. He groped at first in darkness, his duty not being immediately clear to him, but his heart had become so enlarged that it comprehended the universe. It became the dwelling place of the infinite God. All aglow with flaming zeal, the electric glare of Christ-given love, he soon was seen wending his ecstatic way on foot from province to province of the Roman Empire, from Palestine to Spain, preaching a strange and before unheard of doctrine of self-sacrificing gentleness and compassionate love in an age of supreme selfishness, cruelty and hate, when men knew only bloodshed and heartless tyranny Не was heard with amazement by the great. Even the fair-minded Festus said to him: "Paul, Paul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad;" but Paul meekly replies: "I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness."

Which is the more rational method, that of the philosophers or that of Jesus? I say emphatically, that of Jesus; because from the heart proceeds action (passion is the source of action); from the head proceeds illumination. It was not reason that led Warren to his death on Bunker Hill; it was passion-sublime patriotism. Reason is as cold, rigid and dead as a snake in mid-winter, until warmed into suppleness and life in the sunshine of passion. Recognizing the truth, then, that from the heart proceed all human actions, good or bad, as from a fountain flows water, sweet and bitter, the necessity for a pure heart antecedent to a correct and blissful life is apparent. It is ap